


Something Other Than Your Kryptonite

by bookaddict209



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: I don't know why I thought this was a good idea, PTSD, Parentlock, first try at third person, kind of agsty, technically parentlock
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-02-21
Updated: 2017-12-28
Packaged: 2018-01-13 06:07:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 46,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1215487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookaddict209/pseuds/bookaddict209
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John and Sherlock are trying to decide on their next case when when the perfect one crosses their threshold and claims to be Sherlock's daughter. She doesn't want much, just her emancipation. One question- why does Sherlock say no? (Hint: it's not what you think)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Just Sign Here

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, people! This is just a story I've been working on for a while. The story kind of came from nowhere, but I'm concerned about how many Dad Sherlock scenarios I've come up with in the last couple of days -_-. Anyway, if everything goes the way I want it to, this story should get updated fairly regularly (no schedule, just when the next chapter is finished, the last chapter will be posted).

Tensions at 221B had been running on the high side lately. The cases had been pouring in, but the detective had refused to take on any of them, deeming them unworthy of his attention. John didn't understand Sherlock's rationale. If the entire point of solving cases was to _distract_ himself, what should the caliber of the case matter? He could solve a quick succession of cases to distract himself if he needed to.

John just needed him to _get out of the apartment._ He'd walked inside the day before and was greeted with Sherlock sitting in his chair with his hands steepled under his chin, staring at the eviscerated pig intestines he'd smeared all over the floor. Sherlock was coated in blood from head to toe; it was even under his fingernails. John had been shocked and disgusted with the whole scene, but the nail in the coffin had come when John realized Sherlock was wearing one of John's favorite jumpers over his suit.

He'd been so galled at the sight of his jumper covered in blood that he swore with a ferocity that had made Ms. Hudson come up the stairs and shut the door. He'd told Sherlock that if he didn't choose a case to occupy himself before the next day, John would stop helping Sherlock on cases permanently.

John pulled the kettle off the stove and poured it into his mug. He stifled a yawn as he looked out into the living room at Sherlock. He didn't think Sherlock had slept at all last night, even after the exhausting task of cleaning up all the pig's blood. John had passed out at three in the morning and was practically dead on his feet. The man was a machine, plain and simple.

Said machine was standing in the corner of the room in his robe, eyes roving over the walls. Printouts of the different available cases were tacked to it; he was trying to pick one. He'd been there since the night before, in the exact same spot. John really hoped he picked one soon.

“Come on, does it _really_ matter who's case you take on?” he finally demanded after twenty minutes of silence.

“It has to be a good one,” Sherlock shot back. “Nothing so ordinary. I'm bored, John, and I need a case to entice me.”

“Are there any good ones on the board?”

Sherlock's hand pointed to a few of the papers. “Killings that seem to follow the pattern laid out in the plot of old puppet shows. People falling asleep in their beds only to wake up driving cars. Man buried his wife two months ago and is convinced that she's not only come back, but is also stalking him.”

“Great,” deadpanned the doctor. “Then pick one and let's go. You've been there since last night. It's not that difficult.”

“It's not about _a_ case, John, it's _the_ case. Lately everything we've been taking on have started to blend. They're all the same. I need the case that breaks the pattern; a case to _baffle_ me.” John rolled his eyes at Sherlock's dramatics. _Just pick a damn case already_ , he thought. It wasn't worth all the angst.

“Sherlock, dear,” Ms. Hudson called up the stairs. “There's a young woman here for you.”

His hawkish eyes snapped forward in excitement. “Do we have a client?”

“Not sure about that,” she told him, climbing the stairs. “Seems a bit young to have a case.”

A second set of lithe footsteps followed Ms. Hudson's, bringing Sherlock's attention to the young woman. Ms. Hudson retreated back to her flat. The girl stepped into the flat and smiled at him. “Are you Sherlock Holmes?” she asked, her voice indicative of a Scottish accent.

She was a teenager, about sixteen or seventeen. Long black hair, blue eyes, dimple on the left when she smiled. She wore a threadbare striped jacket over a red cotton t-shirt that had a wilting lily painted onto it. Her jeans were too big for her, swallowing her willowy frame and billowing around her feet. She wore Oxfords.

Sherlock's mind did what it did best.

_Oxfords; clearly dressed for comfort._

_T-shirt is hand painted, perhaps a gift, more likely done herself. Artistic, judging from the callouses on her fingers and spots of paint on the jeans._

_Frugal with money spent on clothing- that jacket is clearly too small and too old to be of much use. Sentimental?_

_Scottish accent gathered from time spent in Scotland, but not native._

_Extreme sun exposure._

_Fond of rabbits. Recently came to London. Alone. Intelligent. Calculating. Sexually active._

He snapped out of his whirlwind of deductions to give a mirthless grin to the girl. “I am. Come in.”

She stepped inside and ran her eyes over the flat in a very Sherlock-esque sort of way. Very quickly she noticed John in the kitchen. He gave a slight wave. “John Watson.”

She grinned. “I know. I've read your blog.”

Sherlock stepped across the room and gestured to the chair across from him. To his surprise, the girl shook her head. “If it's all the same to you, Mr. Holmes, I'll stand. I doubt this will take very long.”

 _Odd_ , thought Sherlock. Regardless of how long she imagined it would take, who would refuse a chair to stand?

“You have a case for us, then?” John asked, wandering into the room with his tea.

The girl smirked. “Three months ago I had a case. This is simply a means to an end.” John had no idea what that meant, and he wasn't yet awake enough to care.

Both men sat and the girl stood between them. She ran her eyes over both of them, opened her mouth to speak, and then closed it with a smile and a sigh.

“I'm not quite sure where to begin,” she admitted. “The situation is quite bizarre, and there's a good chance you won't believe me.”

Already Sherlock was beginning to become both impatient and excited. “Don't waste my time with nonsense. Be succinct; _don't_ be boring.”

She didn't care for his attitude. Her eyes narrowed ever so slightly and she smirked. “The short version then? Lovely.”

She reached into her bag and rummaged around before pulling out a sealed manila folder. She held it out to Sherlock and said, “My name is Jacqueline Piper, but everyone calls me Jack. And according to my birth certificate, you are my biological father.”

Silence fell over the flat.

Sherlock blinked.

He blinked again.

Then he took the folder out of Jack's hands and slowly inspected the contents. He'd been right about her accent- she hadn't been born in Scotland. Her birth certificate stated that she had been born here in the heart of London, to a Mary-Lynn Piper and one Mr. Sherlock Holmes.

“You're....” he trailed off. He couldn't think of a single thing to say. John sat on the couch, so shocked at the news that he'd almost dropped his tea.

Jack laughed at his puzzled expression. “Oh, it gets better, Mr. Holmes. I'm filing a petition against the city of London for my immediate emancipation. I need either both parents' signatures, both parents' death certificates, or a combination of the two. Mum is _quite_ dead, so that just leaves your signature.”

She pulled more papers out of her bag and handed them to him. His eyes roved over them and discovered that they were indeed emancipation forms, marked with large X's where he needed to sign his name. He still couldn't think of a single thing to say.

“ _Succinct_ enough for you?” Jack asked with a smirk and crossed arms.

“Are you serious? Your _daughter_? How is that possible? I thought you were...” John trailed off, immediately aware of how inappropriate this conversation was.

“I am.” Sherlock looked up at her. “This is not possible. I can assure you that I've never had physical relations with a woman. ”

“You may not have ever had sex, but you've certainly, er, _donated your time_ before,” Jack said delicately.

“What does that mean?” John asked.

Sherlock breath a sharp intake. “Oh my. Oh _no_.”

“What?”

“Sperm, John. I donated my sperm a long time ago.”

John was absolutely shocked. He couldn't even begin to conceive of Sherlock _donating his time_. “Oh, God, why?”

“I was doing an experiment,” he said, his eyes looking inwards as he regressed. “The sperm bank was adamant against letting me use their lab in the beginning, but they eventually agreed to let me use their equipment in exchange for....a donation.”

Silence bounced around the room. Nobody could think of anything to say. Jack swayed on the balls of her feet awkwardly. She hadn't meant to make the man this upset, and while it was funny, it wasn't getting her close to a signature. “So....”

Sherlock looked at the girl again and surveyed her from head to toe. A daughter? He had a _daughter_?

Well. He _did_ say he wanted to be baffled.

 


	2. The Proof Is In The Spit

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's chapter 2. Whoop!  
> PS- a few things will be out of order, and just for the sake of now, I've repurposed John's first day with Sherlock and given it to Jack. But don't worry, the missions will be more original later!

The first thing he did, obviously, was call Molly at St. Barts and have her prepare a paternity test. He wouldn't simply take the girl's word for it; papers could easily be forged. He needed science to tell him what he uneasily suspected.

Sherlock and John raced around in their rooms, throwing on clothes and running through the necessary morning preparations at warp speed. Jack waited patiently in their living room, tapping on her phone, still not sitting. Sherlock noted before he darted from the room that it was cutting edge, a state of the art model that had only come out weeks before. _Money saved on clothes is spent on electronics._

The two men re-entered the living room, both staring at Jack. “Well... come along, then,” Sherlock said, clearing his throat and wrapping his scarf around his neck. John waited until Jack had walked out to follow behind so he could study the girl. She was on the short side for a girl her age. Her hair was a dark brown-but-not-quite-black color, down over her shoulders.

She wrapped her arms tight against her chest when they stepped outside to shield herself from the cold. John wondered briefly why she didn't wear a thicker coat. Sherlock tried to hail a taxi.

“Mind telling me where we're going?” she demanded.

“St. Barts, a lab I frequent when I have cases. I need to perform a paternity test,” Sherlock informed.

She rolled her eyes. “Really? You think I would lie about being your daughter only to _then_ ask for my emancipation?”

“I think it's entirely possible,” was his flat reply.

“Oh, come now. Balance of probability.”

Sherlock faltered in his step at the familiar words and whirled on Jack. “What did you just say?”

She rolled her eyes again. Sherlock already didn't care for the habit. “I read your book _years_ ago. Besides, don't you think I Googled you?”

He blinked at her before shaking his head and hailing a cab, properly this time. The trio climbed in and the cab set off for the lab.

0-0-0-0-0-0

Sherlock burst through the doors in his usual bombastic way with a force that made Molly jump. “I did what you asked and had the kit brought down and assembled for you,” she said nervously. “I'm not really sure I heard you right, Sherlock, you said something about a daughter....?”

She peeked around Sherlock's towering frame and noticed the teenager huddled in the corner of the room. The girl looked up and smiled. “Jack Piper. Hello.”

Molly nodded in a daze before wandering to the other side of the table. Sherlock tossed his winter wear to the side. He put Jack's birth certificate and emancipation papers off to the side of the table and began rummaging through the different components of the kit. John awkwardly stood on the other side of the table and watched, feeling quite useless. Molly, still slightly confused at what was going on, glanced down at her birth certificate. She read more closely and her eyebrows puckered in amazement.

“You're _fifteen_?” she asked incredulously. Sherlock's head snapped up. Even John looked surprised.

Jack laughed at the befuddled expressions. “I know. I'm tall.”

Molly's eyes uneasily glanced at Jack's chest. Tall wasn't the word she would use.

John, meanwhile, was slightly worried about his friend. Sherlock was doing that thing where he became extra-analytical and cold when he was freaked out on the inside. “Sherlock, what is it you're doing?”

“Paternity test. DNA can be studied for similarities and patterns between the father and the offspring. I need to check and see if our DNA is at all similar. If it is, I need to know everything about how this happened and contact that sperm bank and demand that my specimens be destroyed immediately. Spit into this.”

That last comment was directed at Jack, who was standing over in the corner looking at call sheets. Anything to distract herself from the cold, antiseptic mood of the room. Hospitals and hospital-like places made her uneasy. When she looked up, Sherlock was holding out a small jar to her.

“I'm sorry?” she asked.

“Normally I'm supposed to swab your cheek, but the strands of DNA extracted from such a small sample could take days to evaluate, and I'd much rather get this settled today. Spit. In here.”

Jack warily took the vial and, red-cheeked, turned her back on the room. Her shoulders convulsed as she made a small 'ptoie' noise. John chuckled. It was kind of cute.

Sherlock did the same in a much less dignified way and accepted Jack's, labeling them both and pulling a microscope closer to him. He had just powered it up when the door opened.

DI Lestrade walked in and sighed. “Finally. Been looking for you everywhere.”

On any other day, Sherlock would've already been out the door and into a car, but he was a little busy at the moment. “No.”

Lestrade straightened up. “You don't even know-”

“Doesn't matter. I'm busy.”

“But it's a murder.”

Dammit. He could use one right now. “Busy.”

“It's part of the serial suicides,” he tried again.

“ _Busy_.”

“There's been a fourth. She left us a _note_.”

The consulting detective in him shivered with delight. They _never_ left notes. He reluctantly pulled away from the microscope and pushed everything toward Molly. “Take this where it needs to go and have it evaluated. Call me by the end of the day with the results.”

He grabbed his coat and scarf, donning them while ignoring Molly's weak protests that she had other work to do and leaving the room. John gestured to Jack and the two of them left as well.

They caught up with the pair of detectives as they walked outside. “Good to see you, John,” Lestrade said. “You're looking....tired.”

“I'm certainly not bored, I can tell you that.”

Lestrade noticed Jack then. He'd seen her in the room but didn't know she was with Sherlock. “And who are you?”

She extended her hand. “Jack Piper. Hello.”

Lestrade took it. “Hello. How do you know these guys?”

“Just met them this morning. My relationship with them is pending.”

Lestrade nodded before realizing he had no idea what that meant. But at that point they were back outside, so he just shrugged and got in his car.

The four of them drove off down the street and Jack turned to face John. “You two never stay in one place long, do you?” she whispered.

“Yeah, get used to that.”

“So where are we going now?”

“Crime scene,” he answered. “There's a body Sherlock'll need to look at.”

“Ah. Why am I going too?”

“If those tests come back positive, you and I will have much to discuss,” Sherlock said, surprising both of them. “I'd rather not have to hunt around for you.”

Lestrade looked in the rearview mirror. “Tests? What tests?”

“Paternity. Jacqueline may or may not be my child,” he replied in a clipped voice. “I'm verifying.”

“Call me Jack,” she insisted.

“I don't approve of nicknames.”

“Oh, like _John_ is a full name?”

Lestrade ogled the girl in the mirror. Sherlock, possibly the most un-human human he'd ever met, had a daughter? He respected the man greatly and appreciated his help, but when they got the crime scene Lestrade ran inside and told everyone within earshot. It was just that fucking funny.

Sherlock climbed out of the car and walked over the the police tape with his blogger and (potential) daughter behind him. Donovan and Anderson were at the edge of the sidewalk. Donovan was clearly guarding the perimeter, but it looked like Anderson had just come out to see the new topic of gossip. Sherlock noticed they were glaring at each other slightly when they arrived.

“They're waiting for you in there,” Donovan said, both she and Anderson taking furtive glances at Jack. She gave them both a humorless smile. She hated being stared at.

Sherlock absorbed all their details and body language (coupled with the fact that they were three feet apart) and deduced that their affair was having a rough patch. He held his tongue, deciding to save his observation until one of them irritated him. He walked inside.

John and Jack followed. “What was up with those two?” John asked.

Sherlock looked back at him. “What do you mean?”

“They weren't being as...aggravating as usual,” John said.

“Probably too consumed with their messy affair,” Jack said with a smirk.

John raised his eyebrows and Sherlock stopped walking all together. “ _What_?”

She rolled her eyes. It was the third time she'd done it in the past hour and Sherlock was seriously considering grabbing her head the next time she did it. “I told you, I read your book.”

Sherlock raised an eyebrow, impressed. Jack could deduce after reading his book? Pride swelled in his chest that something he had produced (be it the girl or the book) had made the world a bit less stupid.

Sherlock and John walked into the room with the dead body, both of them pulling on latex gloves. Jack tried to stand just outside the doorway, but there was too much equipment and too many people; she was getting in the way. She went inside with trepidation and holed herself up in the corner. Hospitals gave her the willies, but dead bodies just flat out scared her. She had an unnatural fear that if she got to close it would start to move again.

“Two minutes,” Lestrade told them.

“May need longer,” Sherlock replied, the whole of his attention on the puzzle in front of him. John stood to the side with Jack, doing nothing. She briefly wondered why he came if he wasn't going to help.

He made quick work of the corpse. He gently touched her jacket and under the collar, examined her jewelry, and patted her pockets. He opened his mouth to tell Lestrade what he'd found, but wondered if Jack could do it just as efficiently as he could. He turned to her. “Jacqueline, come here.”

She immediately looked uncomfortable. “What for?”

“I want to see what you can deduce from the body.”

“How about, _no_?”

“Come now, she's _dead_. She's not going to bite you,” Sherlock said impatiently.

Jack sighed and leaned forward with her arms folded, but made no move to come any closer. She began staring at the body.

“From over here,” Sherlock demanded.

“I can do it just fine from where I am, thanks,” Jack told him irately.

Sherlock sighed in annoyance. Why were people so squirmy about death?

“Well, I would guess that she was from Cardiff, um, only in town for one night or so.”

“Cardiff? Why Cardiff?” Lestrade asked.

“She's wet,” Jack answered. “And it didn't rain in London today.”

“...Okay, but how do you know she was only here one night?”

“Her shoes. Why would you wear four-inch heels through rain unless you were going somewhere dry?”

“Shut up, Lestrade, don't interrupt her,” Sherlock said.

“I'm done,” she said. “What else is there?”

There was more, but he realized she wouldn't be able to tell because she couldn't see the woman's jewelry from over there. He resisted the urge to go over and drag the girl closer to the corpse, knowing Lestrade and John would stop him.

“Her earrings, bracelet, and necklace are all clean, but her wedding band is dirty. What does that tell you?” he persisted.

Jack scratched her head, uncomfortable with being put on the spot. “That she's not really happy in her marriage. What does the inside of the band look like?”

He pulled it off. “Clean.”

“Then she takes it off and puts it on repetitively. Only adulterers do that.”

Sherlock grinned. “Very good. Now come over here.”

“No.”

“Not for the body, for the floor next her hand,” he clarified. “The note.”

Jack slowly approached where he pointed, giving the body a wide berth. John felt sorry for the girl, forced to be where she was so obviously uncomfortable. He was going to say something, but she was already over there.

“ _Rache_ ,” she said with a perfect German accent. “Revenge. Though it's more likely that she died before she could scratch out the L in Rachel.”

 _Remarkable._ She had deduced everything he had, and from a distance. The girl had potential.

“But who's Rachel?” Lestrade asked.

“Is it not in her phone?” Jack asked.

“There isn't one.”

She shook her head. “Yes, there is. What kind of adulterer doesn't have a phone?”

“Well, we checked the body and the purse, and it wasn't there.”

“What about her case?” Jack asked. Sherlock was stymied; he had missed that.

“There was no case,” Lestrade said, becoming the tiniest bit impatient.

“Look at the splash patterns on the back of her tights,” Jack protested. “You get those kind of marks when you're dragging something behind you that has wheels through rain. There's a case _somewhere._ ”

“Oh,” Sherlock breathed. “The case!” He stood and ran from the room. Everyone followed after a moment of confusion.

“Where are you going now?” John asked, following behind him.

“Come John, use your head. Pink! _Find Rachel_!” he shouted to Lestrade before zooming out of the building. John was quick to follow.

“Aren't you going to follow?” Lestrade asked Jack.

“I will; but first I need to use the bathroom,” she answered. He pointed her in the direction of the loo and she went inside.

Outside, John and Sherlock ducked into the first cab they saw and Sherlock sent it west.

“Pink?” John asked.

“Yes, pink. Pink jacket, pink shoes, pink shirt, pink umbrella. The case and the phone will undoubtedly be pink too. We just have to find it.”

“Where would that be?”

“Where her murderer could dispose of it without it being obvious. Think it through, John, and it's clear as anything.”

“Right.”

They were silent for about fifteen miles, and then-

“Sherlock?”

“Hmm?”

“Where's Jack?”

 


	3. Meetings and Murders

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author's Note: I just want to take a quick second here and let you all know a few things about the story. First, Sherlock does eventually get fiercely attached to Jack, but that's not the reason he doesn't emancipate her when they first meet. And secondly, of course Moriarty will be in this story (he's only the most entertaining villain Sherlock has had so far.) I've tried to come up with a creative way to incorporate him in the story, so be on the lookout for his name!
> 
> Anyway, on with the show!

“Un-fucking-be _lie_ vable,” Jack muttered, freezing her ass off on the corner. She had popped into the bathroom for ten seconds, and those two gits had left her. She knew from her extensive research on Sherlock that he was sociopathic and wasn't all that surprised, but she thought at least _John_ would remember her. Now she was stuck who knows where, it was freezing, and she had no cash for a cab.

That didn't necessarily mean she was out of options, she was just loathe to play that card.

Instead, she set off southwest, in the opposite direction the cab had taken them earlier. She remembered passing pubs and drugstores along the way, and when she found one she could get cash off her card and get a ride. Easy.

Sure enough, about ten or fifteen minutes later, she was in the middle of a small shopping area. She didn't see anywhere for her to get cash, so she continued on. She stopped at the corner of a street to wait for the light to change.

The phone in the phone booth next to her began to ring. She paid it no mind.

A few hundred meters later, the phone inside one of the drugstores rang. She was again waiting on the curb, and she watched as the cashier reached for the phone. It stopped ringing just before he could grab it.

The next time it happened, she was just about to pass the phone booth. It rang on as she watched, intrigued as to who could be trying so hard to get her attention. She wasn't stupid, she knew it was for her. She decided to indulge her curiosity.

She stepped inside the booth and answered the phone. “I have my own phone, you know,” she simpered into the mouthpiece. “It's much more effective for getting my attention.”

“Do you see the video cameras on the bank you just passed, Ms. Piper?” a voice asked.

She looked back at them in time to see them spiral away from her.

“And the one across the street?”

She watched them swivel and point in the opposite direction. Three more cameras were diverted from their paths and pointed away from where she was standing. She was invisible to all cameras within a four block radius.

She got the message.

0-0-0-0-0-0-0

The building was dark and the ground was wet. Bright lights sitting on the ground cast enough light for her to see the man with the umbrella and a chair on the other side of the room. When she stepped out of the car, he made no move toward her. She walked toward him with adrenaline coursing through her, taking stock of all the available exits and planning to bludgeon the man with his umbrella if she had to.

He smiled at her when she approached, a smile that didn't quite touch his eyes. “Evening, Ms. Piper. So sorry to pull you out of town so indelicately.”

“Hmmm. Any point in asking where I am right now?”

“Not much, but you may if you wish.”

“I'm good.”

He gestured to the chair. She shook her head. “No, thanks.”

“You had a very long walk today, Ms. Piper. Surely your legs must be tired.” But again, she shook her head.

“If I end up having to run from you, sir,” she told him calmly, “I'd rather already be on my feet.”

He smirked at that, but internally the girl rose in his esteem. She was smart to ensure her safety. “I do hope I haven't frightened you.”

“Forgive me, sir, but you're not very frightening.”

He laughed. There was a trace of sarcasm in it. “How brave of you. Bravery is by far the kindest word for stupidity, don't you think?”

“I'd rather be stupid than arrogant,” she told him quietly.

He frowned. “What is your connection to Sherlock Holmes?”

“Pending. At the moment I'd say we don't have a connection.” She wrapped her arms around herself tightly. It was even colder here than it had been at the bloody crime scene.

“I'd hardly say it's nothing. You just met him this morning and you're already off solving crimes with him.”

“If you already know that much, then you must know what we are to each other,” she retorted.

The man smirked. “Sadly that part remains a mystery. An unimportant one, however. Do you plan to continue your association with Mr. Holmes?”

She just looked at him. “Who _are_ you?”

“An interested party.”

“Interested in Sherlock? Why? You can't be his friend; he's not the type.”

Eyebrows raised. “Not true. He has John.”

“John is something else. I'd say he's more of a caretaker than a friend. So who are you?”

“He would call me his enemy. His arch enemy, in fact.” The man rolled his eyes and scoffed. “He can be so dramatic.”

“Oh, yes, why be dramatic about the man who's asking weird questions about you in an abandoned warehouse?”

The man's mouth twitched. “If you do intend to continue your relationship with him, I'd be happy to pay you a meaningful sum of money to help...ease your way.”

Now it was Jack's turn to raise her eyebrows. If he thought she needed money, he _really_ didn't have a clue who she was. “In exchange for what?”

“Information. Nothing indiscreet, just... tell me what he's up to.”

“Why?”

“I worry about him. Constantly.”

Well that was obviously a lie. “Not interested.”

“I haven't mentioned a figure.”

“Doesn't matter.”

“You're very loyal very quick, Ms. Piper.”

“No, not loyalty. Just disinterested. Besides, I told you our relationship is pending. Could be nothing. If that becomes the case, I'd _hate_ to take your money and not be able to uphold my part of the bargain.”

He could note the sarcasm in her voice and smiled wanly. “Very well. For various reasons, however, I would prefer it if my concern go...unmentioned.”

“You got it. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go freeze on Baker Street.” She turned and walked away. She was only a few steps away, though, when she stopped and turned back around. “For future reference, sir, you may want to watch out.”

His eyebrows furrowed in a way that dared her to repeat herself. “I'm sorry?”

“Just as you have a vested interest in Sherlock Holmes, someone out there has a vested interest in me. They may not take kindly to being unable to locate me.”

His eyes narrowed into slits. The British Government did not take kindly to being on the bad end of intimidation. “Are you _threatening_ me, Jacqueline?”

“No, sir. Just warning you. Next time you want to talk, just call me. Later.”

She left him standing in the warehouse, chewing on that bit of information.

0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0

She departed the car and returned to 221B Baker Street ten minutes later. Mrs. Hudson was surprised when she rang the doorbell.

“Hello, dear,” she welcomed her, pulling her inside. Jack breathed a sigh of relief when the heat hit her.

“Hello, Mrs. Hudson.”

“Why are you not with the boys?” she asked.

“Complicated. Are they upstairs?”

Mrs. Hudson nodded and escorted her back up. “Jack's back, boys,” she called ahead.

When Jack entered the flat, John breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank God.”

Sherlock was laying on the couch covered in nicotine patches. “Told you she'd come back, John.”

“Where _were_ you?” John demanded.

“Well, after I was oh-so-rudely left at a murder scene,” she said accusingly, “I had to walk back.”

Mrs. Hudson gasped. “You left a child alone at a crime scene? Sherlock, how naughty of you.”

“ _Goodbye_ , Mrs. Hudson,” Sherlock said from the couch. She went downstairs, tutting the whole way.

“It took you an hour and a half to find your way back?” John asked, guilt setting in hot and heavy. It was somewhat relieved when she laughed.

“No, I would've been here twenty minutes ago, but I was pulled into a conversation with one of Mr. Holmes' friends.”

Sherlock's head snapped up. “Friend?”

“Well, enemy, he says.”

Sherlock had no idea who she was talking about. _Enemy_ didn't narrow the field down at all. “Oh. Which one?”

“Doesn't matter,” she replied. “I handled it.”

John was concerned, but at the word 'handled', Sherlock lost all interest. “We're waiting on a text from the murderer,” he told her.

“Scintillating.” She leaned against a wall and closed her eyes. God, she was exhausted.

John noticed her discomfort and was quick to stand and offer his chair. He collapsed into Sherlock's chair, close to the fireplace. Jack burrowed into the cushions on the chair, taking advantage of John's leftover body heat. He realized for the first time that, while Jack was tall, she was the skinniest little thing he'd ever seen. She tucked her legs under her and his chair practically swallowed her.

“So how is he killing all these people?” John asked Sherlock after five minutes of quiet. “I still don't understand; how is it a murder if it looks like a suicide?”

“They're self administering poison, yes, but not because they want to,” Sherlock answered. “The murderer is forcing them into taking a fatal poison. Why he's doing it is what we need to know, not how, John.”

John's phone began to buzz. “That'll be our killer,” Sherlock said. Neither one of them answered the phone, and Jack was fading in and out of sleep at this point.

“So what now?”

“Now we go find him,” Sherlock answered. He stood and put on his coat.

“What, now? What about Jack?” John noticed the drowsy child was vacillating on the edge of sleep and was quick to throw a blanket over the girl's shoulders. She pulled it tighter around herself and hummed in appreciation.

“Look at her, she's fine,” Sherlock argued. “She'll take a nap and still be here when we get back.”

He left and John reluctantly followed him out.

Sherlock was half right; she was still there when they returned. And so were half a dozen cops.

 


	4. Police and Protocol

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Enjoy!

She had been having a nice little doze when the front door of the flat had burst open and Lestrade, followed by six people she' vaguely recognized, waltzed in like they owned the place. She was jolted awake.

“Sorry, did I wake you?” Lestrade asked. He asked, but it seemed like he didn't really care that much. He pointed his officers in different directions, instructing them to search around the flat.

“What's going on?” she demanded groggily. Adrenaline pulsed through her, and protocol ran through her head. She pushed the thoughts away, not wanting Sherlock and John to come back to seven knocked-out coppers in their flat.

“Nothing to worry about,” he told Jack. “It's a....drugs bust.”

She blinked hard. She had no idea what to make of that. She watched silently from the chair as the officers rummaged through every drawer and cabinet. A woman in the kitchen stopped her search and leaned against the wall, looking at Jack with a mixture of awe and condescension.

“So, you're Sherlock Holmes' daughter, are you?” she asked. Jack vaguely recognized her from the crime scene; she was having an affair with the idiot in the corner. _Her name is Donovan, yes?_

“I think so, ma'am. He's verifying.”

“That must not sit very well,” Donovan said. “You show up and tell a man he's your father, you expect him to be excited.”

“I don't mind that he's thorough, ma'am. I need him to be. If it turns out that he's not my dad and he signs my emancipation papers, it could come back to bite me in the ass.”

Donovan chuckled and noticed for the first time that the girl was warily eyeing her from across the flat. “You look scared of me,” she noted.

Jack nodded and simply said. “You have a gun.”

“Yeah, we all do. What does that have to do with anything?”

“I don't like guns. I give all due respect to people who have guns. By the way,” Jack continued, lowering her voice. “If you want this whole rough patch with your affair to go over, that's what he needs to give you.”

Donovan didn't know which statement baffled her more, but she bristled at the mention of her secret affair with Anderson. She didn't have time to make a comeback, however, because the door slammed open and her favorite Freak strode inside.

John immediately strode over to his chair and asked Jack quietly if she was alright. Her discomfort was the first thing he'd picked up on when they'd entered the room.

“There's a _lot_ of firepower in this room,” she whispered.

“Guns make you nervous?” he asked. She nodded. “I'm sure it's fine; no one is pulling a gun on anyone.”

“They might soon,” she said, gesturing to Sherlock, who was yelling at the detective inspector.

“What do you think you're doing?” he yelled at Lestrade.

“It's a drug bust.”

“I'm clean, Lestrade, you know that.”

“Is your apartment? _All_ of it?”

Jack looked to Sherlock's face. He clenched his jaw and didn't deign that comment with an answer. He was good at hiding his emotions; not so adept at hiding drugs. She had been in the flat for less than three hours (two and a half of which were spent in a not-so-deep-sleep) and she knew of two hiding spots for his drugs already. There was cocaine in the expired cookies in the cupboard, and cigarettes in the fireplace. No morphine, though, which was strange.

“Lestrade, you have _no_ right-”

“Sherlock, _you_ have no right to withhold information. Now I'm letting you help out, but this is our case, understand? If you have any evidence we could use, we have the right to it. Now what have you done with her case?”

Sherlock gave him a blank look that fooled exactly zero people. “Oh, come off it,” Lestrade exclaimed. “I knew you'd find the case. We're not stupid. Now either you give it to us or we keep looking.”

“Are these eyeballs?!” Donovan exclaimed from the kitchen.

“Put those back!” Sherlock yelled. “It's an experiment!”

“They were in the microwave!”

Jack shuddered. How disgusting.

“Alright, _fine_!” Sherlock yelled, tossing his hands in the air. He stormed into his room and returned moments later with the case. Lestrade took it and laid it out on the floor, rummaging though the contents and aggravating Sherlock's organization.

Jack looked up at John. “Did you find him?” she asked under her breath.

“No, just destroyed a nice man's holiday,” John said calmly. He noticed Sherlock watching them out of the corner of his eye.

“Ah. Did you at least enjoy your dinner?” she asked.

He quirked an eyebrow. “How did you-”

“Come on John, you _reek_ of Italian food,” she said with a smile. He grinned back at her. He was beginning to like this girl.

“We found Rachel,” Lestrade informed them. “She was Wilson's only daughter.”

“Was?”

“Stillborn. 14 years ago.”

Sherlock groaned in exasperation. This was getting him nowhere. “But that doesn't make any sense. Why would that be the last thing she thought of before she died? If you were dying, what would you say?”

John and Jack answered simultaneously, to everyone's surprise. “'Please God, let me live.'” They immediately looked at each other in shock. Donovan looked up from her perch in the kitchen. What the _hell_?

Sherlock didn't notice and scoffed. “Oh, come on, be more creative.”

“I don't have to,” John responded dangerously.

Sherlock faltered and John could see the regret in his eyes. Jack leaned over the edge of the chair and whispered, “I've been meaning to ask you about that. Were you injured in Afghanistan or Iraq?”

He chuckled quietly. His doubt was slowly fading that Jack wasn't Sherlock's daughter. “Afghanistan. How'd you know?”

“Your shoulder. It twitches slightly when you're excited. It's indicative of a former gunshot wound.”

Sherlock watched their exchange for a beat before turning back toward the assembled cops. “Rachel must mean something.”

“Maybe it's a password,” Jack offered.

Sherlock turned to her slowly with limbs outstretched, a sure sign that he was onto something. “What did you say?”

“Maybe it's a password. I know a woman who used her sons' initials as her bank account password.”

He took a breath. “Oh, clever girl. Perhaps that's exactly it.”

He read the information tag on the case before leaping over to a laptop. He pulled the browser and typed a few words before shouting in victory. “It was her email password!”

“So we can read her email,” Anderson scoffed. “So what?”

“Don't talk, Anderson, you lower the IQ of the whole street,” Sherlock told him calmly. Anderson sputtered but couldn't think of anything to say in response. “If we can read her email, we can access her phone's GPS service and track it. And with it, the moves of her killer.”

“Sorry, what?” Lestrade asked.

“Oh, yeah, we're almost certain the murderer has her phone,” John said.

Lestrade bit his bottom lip and was obviously about to explode (what part of _not keeping evidence_ didn't these gits understand?!) when the laptop bleeped. Everyone looked toward it. Sherlock was reading the coordinates in disbelief when footsteps came up the stairs.

“Sherlock, there's a cab for you,” Mrs. Hudson said, quite flustered at having so many policeman in her flat. Jack smirked at her. It would not bode well for Ms. Hudson for someone to discover the (rather impressive) stash of medicinal marijuana she had in her bathroom.

And suddenly he understood. How the people had all come to find themselves with a murderer. How a person could be unknown and still trusted. It was all so _clear_.

“Yes,” he said slowly. “My cab.”

He refreshed the browser so it would have to start searching over again and stood. “The computer is still searching. False location. If you'll excuse me.”

He left in a swirl of dark curls and high collars. Jack looked at John.

“Yes, all the time,” he said, answering her unanswered question. She smirked and glanced over at the computer while the police officers began rooting through the case. She paused when she realized the phone was right outside, slowly moving away from the building.

_It was in the cab._

The second she realized what was going on, her phone beeped. It was a text from an unknown number, which left her immediately worried. It was the only way they communicated with her, and she hadn't had any contact with them since she left.

**Follow him.**

She slowly shed her blanket and stood, stepping lightly back into the shoes she's taken off. “A friend of mine wants to meet with me,” she told John. “I'll be back soon.”

“Wha...right, yeah...” he muttered. She turned and left down the stairs, but halfway to the door her phone beeped again.

**Take the soldier. Make sure he has his gun.**

She stuck her head back in the flat and got John's attention. “Actually, could you come with me?”

 


	5. Jackie Get Your Gun

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have I updated this week? If I have to ask, I probably didn't -_-. Anyway, here you go! I hope you like it. The story's coming along well; I'm almost fifty pages into it, making it the longest fanfiction I've ever written. I have no idea how many chapters I have.

"So here's the truth of it," Jack said when they were on the sidewalk. "I lied, there is no friend, but Sherlock is in trouble, and I need your help." She tapped on her phone with a speed that reminded John of Sherlock when he was frantic.

John did a double take. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, the phone was in the cab. Sherlock got into the cab with the murderer, and now we have to go find him. If we don't he could be in trouble." It was something they obviously didn't think he could handle on his own; otherwise, why would they be sending her after him? "Do you have your gun?"

"Yes. Wait, Jack, slow down. First of all, how do you know Sherlock is in trouble?" John asked with his hands in the air.

"How can a person get into a cab with a crazy murderer and not be in trouble?" Jack countered. She raised a hand in the air like she was in class, not stepping out into the street, not even looking up from her phone, and two cabs pulled up. John wondered how the hell she had done that.

"Where are we going?" John asked. They climbed into the closest one and buckled in.

"I don't know," Jack answered, handing it to him. She had pulled up Jennifer Wilson's email and was tracking the phone, which was heading northeast. "But we'll find him."

The pair gave the driver street by street directions, explaining apologetically that they knew how to get where they were going but didn't know the final address. The cabbie was understanding, but then, he worked for Jack's benefactors, a fact that John did not know. They followed the cabbie through a serpentine route that ended at a tall, Gothic style school building. It was the sort of structure used by colleges. Jack sent John inside to find Sherlock while she 'paid the cabbie'.

"Be quick, ma'am," the bedraggled cabbie told her. "They went inside ten minutes ago and no one has emerged yet."

"I will," she said, noting the parked cab outside the front of the building. After shaking the man's hand, she ran across the street and into one of the side doors.

She found John quickly, staring through one of the windows. "That bloody idiot," he hissed.

Jack looked through and saw Sherlock with a plump middle aged cabbie with a cheap sweater and a tacky hat across the building. They were talking to each other, and there were two bottles on the table between them with one pill each inside. Presumably, this was the bottle with poison in it. She watched as they each chose a bottle and her heart leapt into her throat. He was going to do it, wasn't he?

Her phone beeped. Shoot him.

"Give me your gun," she ordered John.

"Yeah, that's not happening," he told her. No way in hell was he giving a fifteen year old a gun.

"John, in about twelve seconds, Sherlock is going to take that damn pill and I may lose my father forever, if he is my father. The gun. Now."

"Absolutely not."

She sighed again. "Don't make me take it from you." It sounded not like a threat, but more like a plea not to waster her time.

John raised his eyebrows at her. "Jack, I'm a soldier. I highly doubt-"

He was cut off by her launching herself at him. He dodged her assault, which was what she wanted; she used her heel and wrapped it around his foot, yanking it up and pulling him down. Before he touched the ground, she grabbed his sweater and pulled him back up, reaching under him to pull the gun from his waistband. Once she had the gun by the handle, she let him go, and he dropped on his back with enough force to knock the wind out of him.

"You may be a soldier," Jack told him. "But I'm a graduate of something much greater."

She calmly cocked, took aim, and fired.

0-0-0-0-0-0-0

"He's going to think it was you," Jack told him later, standing with him outside while the police took care of the scene. "All the evidence is going to point toward someone with a high capacity for violence and training as a fighter, neither of which he thinks I have."

"Great," John said warily, rubbing his neck. "Now he'll think I'm a crazed murderer."

"If it's any consolation, he won't be put off by it," she told him. She was hoping for at least a chuckle, but all she got was a cold dark look. She'd expected him to turn against her, but she was disappointed all the same. She had started to like him.

"I really am sorry, John," she told him quietly. "Sorry that I laid you out like that. But I had to do something."

"Sure."

They were quiet for a moment before she said, "He can't know it was me."

"I won't tell him."

"Thank you."

"Interesting contradiction you've got going on there," John sneered scathingly. "You're terrified of guns but shoot one like a Black Op."

"It's complicated, but let's just say it was required of me to learn. The fact that it bothers me wasn't anticipated."

He scoffed and rolled his eyes. Even more silence followed. Jack sighed and decided to lay it all on the line. "I know you hate me now and everything, but if everything goes according to planned, we'll never have to see each other again. For what it's worth, it was a pleasure meeting you."

He opened his mouth to correct the girl- he was upset, sure, but he certainly didn't hate her- when Sherlock approached him.

"Sargent Donovan has just been explaining everything to us," John said quickly. "Two pills? Dreadful. Dreadful business, isn't it?"

Sherlock hummed in agreement. "Good shot."

After a pause, John stammered, "Yes, yes, it would have to be. Through that window."

Sherlock took another half step toward him and whispered, "you'll need to get the powder burns off your fingers. I doubt you'll go to jail for this, but let's avoid the court case."

John saw Jack surreptitiously wiping her hands on her jeans. The two of them began to walk away, Jack lagging behind.

"Are you alright? You have just killed a man," Sherlock asked John. John made a joke about the cabbie deserving it for being horrible at his job, and the two of them laughed. Jack read the message she'd just gotten.

Nicely done. Acquire your own gun for the future.

She put her phone away and jogged a bit to catch up to the two men. Sherlock was mentioning getting Chinese food when his phone rang. He saw that it was Molly and turned away.

They didn't talk for long; Molly said her piece and was promptly hung up on. He turned to say something to Jack, but she wasn't looking at him. She was looking at the man across the way getting out of a car. His presence filled her with a sense of foreboding.

"It's that guy again," she said to Sherlock. "The one I met this afternoon."

At the sight of the man Sherlock visibly bristled. "I know exactly who that is."

He stalked up to him in annoyance. John and Jack followed. "What are you doing here?"

"I was concerned about you, as per usual," the man answered.

"Yes, I've been hearing about your concern," Sherlock hissed. The man glanced at Jack and smirked; he wasn't surprised that she'd said something. John had too, at the beginning.

"Always so aggressive. Did it ever occur to you that we belong on the same side?"

"Oddly enough, no."

"This petty feud between us is childish. People will suffer. And you know how it always upset Mummy."

Jack's face twisted into confusion as Sherlock said, "I upset her? It wasn't me that upset her, Mycroft."

"Hang on, wait," Jack interjected. "Mummy?"

"Yes, mother, our mother. This is my brother, Mycroft. The British Government, when he's not busy being the British Secret Service or the CIA on a freelance basis."

On the inside Jack was reeling. She knew that Sherlock had a brother, but didn't concern herself with details about him. If she had, she would've recognized the name Mycroft. He owned half the political capitol of the world.

Why she had been chosen for release was suddenly starting to make a lot of sense.

Mycroft regarded her with vague disinterest. "And the child? What is she to you, Sherlock?"

"Who, Jacqueline?" he said theatrically, pulling her close. "Why, Jacqueline happens to be my daughter. And if you don't mind, we're going to get dinner. Goodbye, Mycroft. Try not to start a war; you know what it does to the traffic."

Mycroft's eyes opened in shock at the word 'daughter'. He watched in disbelief as Sherlock wrapped his arm around the child and pulled her away. John followed behind.

Jack looked up at Sherlock. "It's official, then?"

"It is."

"What exactly did Molly say?" John asked.

Sherlock smirked at him. "'Congratulations.'"

0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0

Jack slept on their couch that night, despite John's protests for her to use his bed. The next morning, Jack and Sherlock spoke in the living room over tea. John had somehow found the time to buy biscuits the day before, so the three of them enjoyed a quick morning snack of tea and biscuits before Jack and Sherlock moved into the living room. John decided to clean the kitchen (a job that should've been done weeks ago) and keep an ear on the Holmes' conversation.

"Your mother was Mary-Lynn Piper," Sherlock murmured, shuffling through the papers she had brought.

"Yes."

"Where have you been living for the last fifteen years?"

"On a commune," she answered.

"And you and your- wait, sorry, what?" he stumbled.

She blinked at him. "What?"

"You lived on a commune?" Well, that was strange.

"Yep."

"And Mary Lynn lived with you?"

"Yes and no."

"Okay, what does that mean?" he grouched.

She sighed. "It's kind of hard to explain. Does it even really matter?"

"Well of course it matters. Explain." John strained his ears extra hard to hear what she had to say.

She rolled her eyes. It didn't matter- this was about Sherlock's unrelenting desire to know everything in the universe. Her words rolled around in her head like a Boggle game, trying to put themselves together in a way that would make sense. She didn't find one. It didn't really matter; the truth was just weird, no matter what order she put it in. So she took another long drag of her tea before putting it down and facing him. No better way to tell him than to just say it, right?

"I never technically lived with Mom. I was born and raised by my benefactors on a commune with thirty other kids."

The entire backstory Sherlock had created for this girl cracked and shattered. "What?"

"I lived in a communal-living facility with thirty other kids for my entire life. But it wasn't an orphanage," she added.

Was that not the definition of an orphanage? "In what way was it not?" he asked her.

"None of us were up for adoption."

"So why were you there?"

She sighed. "It's difficult to explain why in a manner that makes sense. Basically, everyone there was a child that had been carried for nine months by a surrogate. The surrogates were impregnated through in-vitro with specimens from a sperm donor, or in this case, you."

It vaguely made sense, Sherlock contemplated. Surrogates banding together and building a community; stranger things had happened. He hummed, examining the papers again. "So why did this Mary-Lynn Piper choose my specimens?"

"...She didn't. It was...well, commissioned."

Sherlock's head rose again to meet Jack's eyes; she looked slightly uncomfortable."I'm sorry?"

She picked at the thread hanging off the couch pillow she was hugging to her chest. "All the children were commissioned. That's what it was there for. People paid for specific children to be born."

"And someone specifically chose for this woman to use my DNA?"

"Yes." That aspect of the commune was something she was allowed to share with him. From this point on, however, she'd have to lie.

"So do I have other children?"

"No. Only one child per sample, that was the rule. After the surrogate is pregnant, the specimens are destroyed."

"Why?"

"I don't know. It was never explained to us."

He scratched his head and glanced back down at the papers. "Who 'commissioned' you?"

"I don't know for sure; all I do know is that it was a woman."

"Why would someone chose me specifically?"

Jack shrugged. "Your looks? There were a lot of kids there who were bred to have a certain appearance."

This was beginning to sound more and more bizarre. "Where was this commune?"

"Australia."

"Then how did you get a Scottish accent?"

"We're taught to mimic all the accents, to help us blend in better no matter where we go. Scotland was the last place I was before I came here. That reminds me." She took another long swallow of her tea and sighed. "Better?"

All of the sudden her accent was 100% British. He was vaguely impressed. And also wondering what sort of place taught children to mimic accents with 100% accuracy.

"Your mother was thirty-one when she died. What did she die of?"

"Three bullets."

John dropped his plate in the soapy water in surprise. Sherlock looked at Jack closely to gauge her reaction, but she started at him with a blank face. She kept her face so smooth it was unnatural, even to Sherlock. He added another trait to his internal list of deductions- she was an expert at masking her emotions. He suspected, however, that she had experienced great emotional turmoil over the loss of her mother and was still upset about it.

Sherlock looked back down at the papers and thought. Every field had been completed; all that remained was his signature and Jacqueline would be a fully emancipated citizen of London.

And he didn't want that.

There was a mystery to be solved here. This commune she'd grown up on where children were commissioned- it was exactly the kind of case he needed right now. He wanted to know who had paid Mary-Lynn Piper to have his child and why. He wanted to see this commune, where children were bred but never adopted. He wanted to know why each specimen was only good for one child.

If he let her go, he'd never find out. And he had to find out.

He capped the pen and put it back on the table. "Where are you staying right now?"

"With an associate of my benefactors. Why?"

"We'll need to pick up your belongings. We have another spare room upstairs that's being used as storage, but I can take my things out and move them to the basement."

John looked out into the living room, stunned. He wasn't doing what he thought he was doing, was he?

"A mattress and bed frame can be easily procured, but you'll be on your own for bedsheets and the like. I don't know what you'd prefer; best to not risk it. I'll look into educational-"

"Wait, wait," she said, becoming alarmed. This was not the talk of a man who was about to sign emancipation papers. "What are you doing?"

"Figuring out where to put you. Obviously."

"...but why? If you sign my emancipation forms, I can live in an apartment. I've already got it arranged. It's fine, Sherlock, really, you don't have to do this."

"I know I don't have to. But me not raising my own child? My mother would die." He knew she understood why he was reticent to let her go, so he only said it for John's benefit. He went for the plate of biscuits, realized there were none, and wandered into the kitchen looking for more. John stepped out of his way and glanced at Jack, slightly apprehensive of the girl's rising anger.

"I think you'll find that I've been thoroughly raised," Jack said hotly, standing and facing the kitchen.

"Is that a fact?" he murmured rifling through the pantry. He found a biscuit and edged out of the kitchen, but instead of going back into the living room, he turned the corner and went into his room.

"Seriously. You're not going to sign the papers?" she cried.

"I'm not going to sign the papers!"

"You're making a mistake!" she yelled after him.

"I'll buy you that bed this afternoon!"

0-0-0-0-0-0-0

John waited twenty minutes before trying to converse with Jack. He had originally wanted to make his move after ten, but he had taken a step out of the kitchen when Sherlock swept past and left the apartment. She stared after him, awestruck. "He's actually going to buying a mattress."

Her shock was even more concerning, since he didn't know when it would give way to fury, so he stepped back into the kitchen.

Ten minutes later, Jack was sitting on the couch, staring ahead with a vapidness that made John wary. He still left the kitchen and walked over to her. For all her ferocity, he was legitimately concerned about her. She looked really upset. "Jack?"

"I don't understand," she told him. "Why isn't he trying to get me out?"

"What do you mean?"

"I did my research well, John. Sherlock doesn't care about anyone. Ever. Except maybe you."

John accepted that comment with a twitch of his eyebrow. "Sherlock cares about people, Jack. He cares about you."

She scoffed. "Is that what you really think? That he wants to take me in because he looked at me and his heart grew three sizes? Wake up, John! He just wants to figure out what the deal is with the commune I was raised on."

"Why exactly is that a bad thing?"

She bit her lip, reluctant to share with him. John already had the secret that she was a badass; if she told him what she suspected, it would only deepen the rift between him and Sherlock. Besides, she didn't know if she had cause to be upset yet. She needed to dig deeper, talk to more people.

She tossed her hands up in renunciation. "Nothing. Never mind, I'll be out soon enough." She pulled on her shoes and grabbed her coat off the rack.

"Where are you going?" John asked, concerned. It would do no good to have the girl out drop-kicking London in her anger.

"To get my shit from my place. Apparently, I'm moving in."


	6. Two Weeks and Uncle Treats

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll give you guys this next chapter as an Easter gift! College is seriously kicking my ass right now, so I'm a chapter behind. My classes end in 20 days or so, but I wouldn't expect an update until at least May.
> 
> I was so worried that I would lose everyone when I explained where Jack came from. Glad to see you're all still hanging in!

Two weeks went by. The bed was delivered and put into the spare room, along with all of Jack's belongings. She conceded to the whole thing with poor grace, stomping around and throwing her clothes on the floor. It became apparent to John quite quickly that Jack's plan was irritate the two flatmates until they evicted her.

Within the two weeks that had passed, everything had become covered with  _Jack_. There were socks on the floor of the stairs, there were jackets laid on the sofa, magazines and paint on every flat surface, bras on the shower rod, and hair care products on the sill of the fireplace.

But the kicker, in John's opinion, was the rabbit.

Jack had a white, Dwarf Hotot rabbit sitting on the countertop in the kitchen. When he turned the corner that morning, Jack was feeding it a carrot and gently stroking its head.

"Does no one care that we  _eat_ in this kitchen?" he snapped.

She scoffed. "Please. You eat in those lounge chairs. There's a soy sauce stain in the shape of Africa on that cushion."

"That's not- fine, fine. Whatever. How long have you had the rabbit in the flat?"

"About twenty minutes. My friend was watching her for me, and she just got dropped off."

"Sherlock's not going to like that."

"Sherlock can kiss my ass."

The door past the kitchen opened and the man in question swept in wearing his robe. "John, have you seen my-"

He stopped talking abruptly. John didn't need to turn around to see Sherlock's face. He was sure the look on his own face was mirrored on his flatmate's; nose crinkled in disdain, mouth twisted, confusion at the fact that a rabbit was sitting on his countertop.

"What is  _that_?" he asked.

Sherlock received a cold glare from Jack. " _She_  is Sparrow, and it would do you well to refer to her as such."

Oh good lord. She named an animal after  _another_  animal. That was not going to fly well with Sherlock, John knew.

"Sparrow? You named a rabbit after a bird?  _Why_?" Sherlock walked into the kitchen and looked at Jack like she had lost her mind.

She gave him the same look back. "You don't get it?"

"Get what? Is that supposed to be humorous?"

She rolled her eyes and pointed at herself. "Jack." She pointed at the rabbit. "Sparrow."

John got it and snorted a laugh, moving past Sherlock to get to the fridge. "Cute."

"What?" Sherlock asked, oblivious. Jack raised her eyebrows at him.

"Jack Sparrow? You've never heard of Jack Sparrow?"

"No,who is that?"

Jack scoffed and turned back to Sparrow, feeding her another carrot. "Only the baddest pirate to ever captain the Black Pearl."

Jack had her back turned, so she didn't see, but John saw the way Sherlock's head whipped up and his body froze. "Pirate?" he questioned.

"Yeah, I have an unhealthy thing for pirates," she replied. "She was either going to be Anne Bonny or Grace O' Malley, but then  _Pirates of the Caribbean_  came out and Johnny Depp made a  _veeeeeery_  convincing case for Jack Sparrow."

Sherlock stared at Jack with an unfamiliar expression on his face. John watched Sherlock, curious at his flatmate's reaction. Sherlock's stare was unyielding until Jack picked Sparrow up off the counter and turned back to the men.

"What?" she demanded.

"Nothing," he murmured. He shook his head a bit to shake himself out of his fog. "Nevertheless, I do not allow  _vermin_  in my home. The rabbit will not be allowed to stay."

"That's fine by me. My emancipation papers are on the desk," she said simply.

John sighed, anticipating an argument. The two of them had been arguing profusely about everything, from the state of the mess in the flat to Jack's excessively loud music, and all the arguments started the same way. Ended the same way, too.

"I'm not  _emancipating_  you, Jacqueline," Sherlock growled.

"Well, then, Sparrow isn't leaving."

"I'm sorry, did you hear me ask for your opinion? I am telling you, the rabbit is not staying."

Jack put Sparrow on the counter so she could put her hands on her hips. John took a healthy step back.

"Did you hear me ask if Sparrow could stay? I'm telling  _you_ , she's not going anywhere."

Sherlock sputtered like a beached fish. "E-you-ex _cuse_  me?"

She rolled her eyes. "You heard me. Just because some  _test_  says that you're my father doesn't mean you get to start telling me what to do. I've had Sparrow for two and half years. If I decide to give her up, it won't be because  _you_  told me to."

Veins in Sherlock's neck started to stick out. His normally pale face was drawing enough blood to give him a human-colored complexion. John couldn't help but laugh.

Sherlock whirled on him. "You are not  _helping_."

"Well, now you know what it's like to be met with unrelenting stubbornness," John told him gleefully. Jack smirked at him and picked Sparrow back up.

"You can't have the rabbit," Sherlock told her. "It's leaving my flat."

"If she's going anywhere, she's going to the cage in my room," Jack told him. She then flipped her hair over her shoulder and stalked past him with Sparrow safely tucked under her arm. Sherlock blinked and turned to John with an awestruck expression.

"Can you believe her?" he asked his blogger.

"Sherlock, I can't believe  _you_ ," John told him honestly. "You can't just tell her to get rid of her pet; she's had it for longer than she's known you."

"She is blatantly disobeying me."

"She's a teenager. They rebel against their parents. It's what they do. What did you think would happen when you took her in?"

"I thought at least she would listen to me. I had no idea she was going to be so bloody _difficult_."

"Am I interrupting?"

Sherlock and John turned around to see Mycroft coming into the side entrance to the kitchen. Sherlock scoffed and walked away.

"Jack and Sherlock are having a bit of a rough afternoon," John informed him.

"Don't bother with the backstory, John, he already  _knows_ ," Sherlock snapped.

John looked at Mycroft's face. The telltale arch of his eyebrow told John that yes, he did already know. John made a mental footnote to look into finding those cameras once more.

Footfalls sounded from the corridor, and Jack came back into the living room. Sherlock pulled himself to his full height and readied himself for Round Two, but Jack completely turned her back on him and turned to Mycroft. "Oh. You're that guy."

"Your uncle," Mycroft corrected.

"Right. Hello."

"Afternoon."

Sherlock's mouth dropped open at the slight. He was not only being ignored, but being ignored for Mycroft? He huffed and plopped on the couch to sulk.

"Can I get you some tea, Mycroft?" John asked.

"That would be lovely, thank you."

The only noise in the flat came from John making tea in the kitchen. The three Holmeses were silent. Mycroft twirled his umbrella around and examined the tip of it, studiously avoiding Sherlock's silent rage from the living room. Jack stared at him with unabashed curiosity, deducing what she could about Mycroft before he next spoke. What she saw surprised her slightly.

After two minutes of silence, Sherlock snapped. "Isn't there an election for you to be rigging right now, Mycroft?"

"Sherlock," John warned, handing Mycroft the mug of tea. Mycroft made a face; Jack guessed it was because there wasn't finer china.

"It's quite alright, John. I merely came to meet my niece. Formally, this time," he said with just the tiniest bit of chagrin.

She smirked at that. "Thanks for that; I could do without the ominous black car this time."

He said nothing about her new accent. He'd known all along that it was put on. Mycroft's eyes flitted from Jack's head all the way down to her feet. "Well. It seems that you've been having a trying day, haven't you?" He took a long drag of his tea and waited expectatly.

" _So_  trying," Jack bemoaned. "Sherlock is being so  _rude_  to Sparrow."

"Yes, well, not everyone understands the allure of the rabbit, now do they?"

She looked at him curiously. "Should I ask how you knew Sparrow was a rabbit?"

"He's got the place bugged," John replied. Mycroft didn't deny it.

Jack made a sound of understanding. "Okay. I was  _wondering_  about the camera in the mask."

Mycroft froze. Sherlock glanced at him before flying off the couch and ripping the mask off the wall. A small black camera with a colorful array of wires greeted him. He immediately set out ripping them out and stepping on the webcam.

Mycroft sighed. "Excellent. I shall have to replace that." He glanced at Jack, curious and a bit impressed. "How did you notice that was there?"

"I grew up being monitored. I know what to look for."

"Your previous home sounds like a rather interesting residence. I would so love to hear more about it."

"I was under the impression that you had the British Government under your thumb," Jack replied lightly, walking past and picking up one of her art supply magazines. She knew he was fishing for information, and if he was going to get it, it sure as hell wasn't going to come from her. "Why don't you let the good men and women of MI6 earn their money?"

He shifted. "I'd prefer to learn such data in a more traditional way. I've found that I tend to give people the wrong impression when I arrive with their life's history tucked into a file."

She studied him for a long moment before a gloating smile overtook her face. "You didn't find a single thing, did you?"

He didn't respond. She smirked. "My benefactors are quite careful. If you can find anything on them, I'll be quite surprised."

He scowled and observed Jack as she flipped through the magazine, earmarking certain pages as she went. After he texted Anthea to dig deeper, he observed the flat and turned back to his niece.

"You paint."

"Brilliant deduction."

"What is your artistic focus?"

She looked up at him curiously. Was this another fishing expedition? Jack didn't see how learning about her art was going to help him uncover her secrets. And she couldn't imagine that he was actually interested.

Still, she answered. "Mostly skies and abstractions. Lately, however, I've taken to trying my hand at realism."

"Do you have a favorite artist?"

"At the moment, I'm following the works of Zaria Forman. She renders portraits of icebergs out of pastels that look like photographs."

"Hmm. That sounds quite impressive."

Sherlock looked up from where he was throwing away the decimated camera pieces and glared at his brother. "Oh for God's  _sake_ , Mycroft."

Mycroft looked surprised. "What?"

"You actually  _like_  her, don't you?"

His tone was so disdainful that Jack narrowed her eyes at him. "Well,  _thanks_."

"Whatever do you mean?" Mycroft sniffed.

"All your talk about wanting to get to know her better; you really meant all of that."

Mycroft blinked at him. "Well of course I'm pleased-"

"Not just pleased, you're  _elated_. I can tell from the way you're silently cataloging all her possessions- you're over the moon at the fact that you're an uncle. You want her to  _like_ you.  _And,_ you're thinking about buying her a  _present_."

Sherlock finished his deductions with a sneer. No one spoke for a moment. Mycroft measured his brother's mood with his Holmes senses and decided that maybe he should leave.

"Jacqueline, would you be so kind as to accompany me to lunch?" he asked. He put the mug on the table. "I doubt my brother is going to be very hospitable for the remainder of our conversation."

"Absolutely not," Sherlock answered immediately. "I'm her father, and I say no."

"I'd love to go to lunch," Jack said to Mycroft, stepping in between them and showing Sherlock her back.

Sherlock clenched his fists as Jack picked her threadbare jacket up off the couch and threaded her arms through it. She had a particular talent for finding his buttons and pushing them aggressively. "I said no."

"You did, and as I believe you learned from our earlier discussion, you don't get to make decisions for me."

"Jacqueline, you are being deliberately trying."

"You're treating me like a child."

Sherlock's temper piqued. "You  _are_  a child-"

" _See_ ," Jack sneered, rounding on Sherlock, "I'm  _really_  not."

John and Mycroft exchanged a glance, guessing from Jack's tone that Sherlock had just touched a frayed nerve.

She continued. "A  _child_  needs to be taught right from wrong. A  _child_  needs to be supported by their parents. A  _child_  can't choose for themselves.  _I_ am self-sufficient. _I_  am responsible. You denying me emancipation doesn't automatically make me a child. In the eyes of the law I may be your dependent, but in every way that matters, I am an adult. You  _will_ acknowledge me like one or you will not acknowledge me  _at all_."

Somewhere through her rant she realized she was yelling. She took a deep breath to calm her obviously strummed nerves. Sherlock was silent, his eyebrows up high at her diatribe. She ran both hands through her hair and took another deep breath. When she let it out, she looked at Sherlock with a semblance of calm on her face.

"Now. I'm going to go to lunch with your brother. And if Sparrow is missing when I come back, so help me God, there will be hell to pay."

He sputtered some more. "Are you  _threatenin_ g me?"

"I'm  _warning_  you." She narrowed her eyes at Sherlock to punctuate her point and left the flat. Mycroft, with a head-tip in both directions, followed her out.

Sherlock stared after them, flabbergasted. Jack had officially lived here for no more than a few weeks and already her stuff was everywhere, she'd brought an animal into their home, and then she'd left with  _Mycroft_. Out of everything they'd done to each other, this one cut him the deepest.  _Why Mycroft_?

John opened his mouth to inform him that this was what teenagers did, but he was interrupted by Sherlock's phone buzzing. After a sharp, irritated breath, Sherlock picked it up and checked his messages.

"Lestrade?" John guessed.

"Dimmock, actually," Sherlock corrected. "It hardly matters. There's been a very strange murder at a local park. Autopsy reveals that a severe knife wound killed him, but the he died in front of many witnesses from the park who swear no one touched him. We're needed."

"What about Jack?" John asked as they moved to the door.

Sherlock rolled his eyes. "She'll be fine. She's got  _Mycroft_."

0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0

Mycroft gestured to the sleek black car in front of them and a man sprung from the front to open their doors. Arms around her shoulders, Jack gratefully climbed into the warmth of the vehicle. Mycroft followed behind, eyeing her carefully. She said nothing and stared out the window vapidly.

"Are you alright?" he asked when they were two blocks away from Baker Street.

She blinked and looked over at him in confusion. "Yes?" She made it sound like a question.

"You seem agitated."

She sighed. "I am very mature for my age," she told him. "I have never been treated like a child by those who knew me, and I don't appreciate being treated like one now. Sherlock thought that by taking me in, he would automatically become an authority figure to me. He's just going to have to learn that that's not the way it works."

"And who exactly are  _those who knew you_?" Mycroft asked. "Not your mother, obviously."

"No, not just her." But she didn't elaborate.

Twenty minutes in, she noticed two motorcycles behind them and a car in front of them that had been there for most of the drive. She recognized a tail when she saw one."We're being followed," she told him.

He chuckled. "Not as covert as they seem to think they are. We'll have to work on that."

She attributed his nonchalance to the fact that they were most likely his secret service. Still, she was uneasy about the disassembled sniper rifles she knew the motorcyclists had in their bags.

When they got to the restaurant, Jack moved to her door, but Mycroft had put a hand on her arm and shook his head. Seconds later, the door on his side was opened and he turned and slid out. She had rolled her eyes and followed. Mannerisms were great and all, but she could've been out of the car much faster if he'd let her do it herself.

The maitre d was there, greeting Mycroft and telling him in rapid French that his table had been procured. Mycroft's table turned out to be a private setting on a hidden third balcony that overlooked the entire restaurant. The second they sat down, waiters appeared out of the woodwork to fill glasses with water, hand Mycroft a scotch, light a few candles, hand Jack the menu, and replace the flowers in the vase.

When they were gone, she glanced up at her uncle. He was looking her over with shrewd eyes that she knew were reading her life story in her face.

"What are you thinking?" he asked suddenly.

She smirked and looked back at the menu. "That you're either the prime minister or the man in the shadows who makes the decisions for the prime minister. 'Minor government official' just doesn't cut it anymore."

He chuckled at that and took another sip of his scotch. Jack glanced at the menu for a moment longer before setting it down. She wasn't really hungry, anyway; she'd had Chinese just yesterday.

"I wouldn't have taken you for the familial type," she said, idly playing with her straw.

He shrugged lightly. "Not so. I simply wish to make an opinion of you for myself."

She knew he was lying. Sherlock was right; she could tell by the way he kept looking at her that he was secretly overjoyed to discover he had a niece. She wondered if there was a way to twist that to her advantage.

"I must ask you, though I fear I know the answer; has Sherlock mentioned you to our parents at all?"

Ah, yes, the Holmes seniors. Jack knew plenty about them from her research; they lived in a monolithic mansion that reeked of old money in one of the older parts of London. Their father was a retired army general but their mother had never worked, choosing instead to exercise in society and prestige. And despite what many thought, (and what Sherlock perpetuated,) they loved both of their children very very much.

"Not to my knowledge," she told him.

"Then no. If he had, they would've already appeared."

She titled her head in thought. "Why wouldn't he tell them about me?"

"Because they'll come to meet you, I suppose," he answered. "Sherlock has very little patience for mediocracy, and our parents are as mundane as it gets. Don't get the wrong idea, we care for our parents immensely; but an afternoon spent with them is a dull afternoon indeed."

Jack smirked. Mycroft and Sherlock were both idiots, plain and simple. When their parents were gone, they would wish they had spent more 'dull' afternoons in their parents company. She would know.

Mycroft ordered a steak and she opted for a cup of soup. He made a face at her and said, "I do sincerely hope you do not share my brother's appetite; his lack of eating is troublesome for his health."

She smirked at him and sat up taller. "Why do you think I'm so skinny?"

"I'd attributed it to your athletic prowess," he told her.

"You think I'm athletic?"

"Your upper arm and calfs muscles are those of someone with physical training. I noticed them the first time we met."

"I took yoga back home," she lied effortlessly. Yoga had been part of her regimen, but it had not been the only physical activity she participated in. The other 'sports', as they were, were not appropriate for polite conversation.

"I see. Were you often stressed at home?"

She laughed gleefully. "Watching you try to figure this out is going to be a  _treat_."

 


	7. Shopping Spree From Hell

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter should have come out days ago. I had it all queued up; I don't know what happened.  
> Anyway, I'm on break now, so the chapters should come out quicker than usual. Enjoy!

Jack stumbled into the flat four hours later, unable to make it up the stairs. The bags she had on every arm were so _heavy_ ; seven anchors, all pulling her down. She had lifted heavier, but that was a long time ago in an entirely different situation, and she didn't have a wave of adrenaline helping her along this time. She regarded the shopping bags with irritation. Mycroft had gone _insane_.

It had started innocently enough. When they'd left the restaurant, they had to wait outside for a moment while the car was pulled around. A brisk wind swept past them while they waited, and Jack shivered. Mycroft realized for the first time that the jacket Jack was wearing was less than useless.

“You should wear a real coat in this weather,” he told her.

“This is my 'real coat',” she responded dryly. “It's the only thing I have.”

He stared at her for a beat before nodding and saying, “very well. We shall have to remedy that immediately.”

The car was pulled around then, and Jack dove into the warmth once more. Mycroft instructed the driver to head toward the shopping district.

He had wanted to take her to Harrods (“everyone should have at least one high quality coat”), and she had wanted to go to a thrift store (“if I can get a coat for less than ten dollars, why would I _ever_ pay hundreds?”) so they compromised in the middle and went to the mall.

It wasn't the greatest of compromises. Mycroft absolutely refused to let Jack go into the cheaper outlet stores and only went to the higher end shoppes. They ended up in Burberry, where Jack had been asking to leave and go somewhere _sensibl_ e while Mycroft was pulling coats off the rack and surveying them. He agreed that they could leave if she would at least try on one coat. He had chosen a black coat cut in French military style. There were gold buttons down the front, gold cuff links at the wrists, and ruffles down the back giving the impression of a skirt. It screamed _lolita_.

It was warm, it would go with everything she had in her closet, it was _adorable_ and damn it all, she wanted it. She couldn't help but stare in the mirror when she put it on. She had been running her hands along the sides when she encountered the price tag and got a slap of reality. She immediately took it off and asked her uncle if he had the hanger so she could put it back. He smugly informed her that he had already paid for it while she had been ogling the mirror.

She had tried to give it back, to no avail, and they left the store. Jack stubbornly placed the coat back in the bag and refused to wear it. Mycroft had clucked his tongue at her antics, certain that she'd cave when they stepped outside.

That done, they had started for the exit. They had been passing the Apple store when Jack saw the posters for the iPod touch 5 and remembered that her second generation shuffle was falling apart. She loved music, but the Mothers had refused to buy her a new iPod when hers started to fail. Jack realized that now that she was on her own, she could use her money to buy a new one.

“I didn't know they made blue ones,” Jack muttered softly to herself.

Mycroft, _damn_ his Vulcan hearing, had turned around and, within seconds, dragged Jack into the Apple store and demanded to know which one she wanted. She said she didn't want anything but, seeing through the lie, Mycroft threatened to buy them all. Given what he had spent on the coat, she knew he would do it, so she meekly pointed to the blue one and was handed another bag to add to her arm.

Hours had passed in the same way. They would be close to leaving and he would see something else he thought she wanted. Some of it was justified, like the electric kettle for her room so she wouldn't have to walk downstairs for every cup of tea. But most of it was just ridiculous; she didn't have work, and she didn't have school, so she didn't _need_ the intricately carved mahogany desk.

“Mycroft, please,” she had begged as he signed for it. “I can't accept all of this. It's way too much!”

He hadn't understood and waved her off. She couldn't think of a way to articulate her discomfort, and as punishment she was gifted what felt like half the mall. She finally convinced him she didn't need anything else and got him out of the mall before he saw the Vespas. The last thing she needed was for _that_ to show up at Baker Street.

He had dropped her off at the flat with a smile and a promise to do it again soon. She wondered vaguely if she could bribe the mover to take the desk back when it showed up.

Now back in the flat, she stomped into the living room and immediately stepped on a bottle of her shampoo. The soapy mess immediately soaked into the carpet. With a groan, Jack threw all the bags on the table and surveyed the mess she had crafted throughout the living space.

It made her itch. She was, by nature, a very clean and meticulous person. She figured that Sherlock would be as well, and she had hoped that living in her mess would be intolerable for him and he would kick her out. But Sherlock had adapted, choosing instead to live in garbage (although he did yell at her about it from time to time), and John had suffered in silence. The strategy clearly wasn't working, and she was never one to beat a dead horse.

She decided that it wouldn't technically be a loss for her to clean. More like a strategic truce.

Jack made quick work of everything, choosing to give the flat a thorough washing from top to bottom. The fridge was probably the hardest part, because she didn't know why there were body parts in it and she didn't know if they needed to stay there. She decided to clean out the already empty fruit drawer and throw the hodgepodge of extremities inside. For good measure, she taped it shut with duck tape.

The entire flat was spotless within an hour. She took all of her things from around the flat down to her already spotless room and quickly packed it all away. She was less sure about what do with the bags, so she left them and retired to the living room with the remote.

Jack sat through four episodes of _Doctor Who_ and a Russel Howard comedy special before shutting the TV off. Her limbs felt twitchy, like she needed to move. She paced around the living room and caught sight of her reflection in the shiny surface of the oven door.

She took in her pursed lips, slant eyebrows, and clenched fists and realized that she was angry.

This was something left over from her childhood. She had always been prone to abrupt sour moods, where she wanted nothing more than to sink into a black hole and dissolve into the darkness simply to have something to _do_. It always hit suddenly, and had been the cause of more than a few fistfights. Finally, when she was twelve, the Mothers had taken her aside and talked to her about it.

_Boredom is not a good reason to be angry. It isn't what's making you upset. So stop, take a breath, and figure out what is actually making you mad. Then fix it._

She did as she had been taught. What did she had to be angry about?

Well, she wasn't emancipated. That had been the source of simmering anger for the last two weeks, but it was on the back burner and not necessarily what was causing her mood right now.

She wasn't any closer to figuring out what was up with the woman who commissioned her. She had no idea who she was or what game she was playing, but the evidence that Jack already had told her that something potentially deadly was around the corner. She needed more data, and fast, but that was a source of stress, not anger.

Sparrow was still upstairs in her crate, so either Sherlock had left the second she had, or he had taken her threat to heart. Either way, they weren't fighting about it. She was happy that Sparrow was still with her, but she wanted to argue with Sherlock about it more. The more they fought, the more he would detest her, and the greater her chance for emancipation. But this wasn't really it, either.

She huffed and moved about the kitchen, opening the refrigerator door for no reason. All the shelves were bare, as they had been after she'd cleaned out all the expired food, and her stomach growled in protest. She hadn't really eaten anything while she had been with Mycroft, and she was suddenly starving.

 _This_ , she decided. She would be mad about this.

0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0

Sherlock and John stumbled into the flat at 11:30, tired as no one's business and high off the case's success.

“That was bloody brilliant,” Sherlock cried. “Dissolvable stitches on top of a knife wound that would never hold. Genius!”

John smirked at his flatmate but stopped on the stairs. “Hey. Do you smell that?”

Sherlock paused and put this nose in the air. He braced himself for the scent of blood, or a chemical explosion, but was surprised to smell pepper and tomato sauces.

“That smells _incredible_ ,” John continued, walking up the stairs with renewed energy.

He pushed open the door to the cleanest flat he'd ever lived in and found Ms. Hudson sitting on the couch, eating a plate of food and surrounded by bags from over a dozen shops. She waved gaily as they walked in. “Hello, boys!”

“Evening, Ms. Hudson,” John said while Sherlock took stock of the bags with confusion. “What's going on?”

“I stopped up here on my way to bed to make sure Jack was alright, and she was cooking! She offered me some and it looked so delicious! You really should try some, dears, Jack is quite talented.”

John looked in the kitchen. Jack was still in there, making what looked like an omelette. She was surrounded by dishes and dishes of food. There was spaghetti, tacos, steak, grape leaves and goat cheese, homemade fried rice; a _smorgasbord_ of food. John was shocked- a Holmes using the kitchen for what it was _made_ for. Unheard of!

Jack looked up at them. “Hey.”

“What's going on?” John asked.

“I was angry. I started cooking to become less angry.”

It was such a strange answer and so typically Holmes that John couldn't help but laugh. “I'm not sure what that means. God, this looks amazing, Jack.”

She nodded toward a stack of plates on the table. “Help yourself.”

He picked up a plate and loaded it with everything he could reach. He took one bite of salmon and made a loud, satisfied noise that bordered on an orgasmic sigh.

“ _You_ ,” he said, pointing and shoveling the food on the plate twice as fast, “are officially in charge of all the food in the flat.”

She smirked and folded her omelette over bits of ham. “Don't count on it.”

Sherlock turned in a slow 360 and took in the sight of him immaculate living space. “It's clean.”

Jack paused. “Yes. Well. It wasn't getting me anywhere, and I was tired of looking at it.”

Sherlock grinned to himself. It would seem that he'd won that round.

Ms. Hudson left soon after, giving Jack a fierce hug that she fell into. She didn't realize how much she'd been needing one. John helped her put away the food, none of which she actually ate. Every dish from her cooking therapy took up three shelves in the fridge. John crooned at the sight, exclaiming that they would eat like kings for at least a week.

Jack yawned and stretched, walking into the living room. Sherlock was surveying the bags on the floor.

“I see you went shopping with Mycroft,” he said bitterly.

“I did. That reminds me,” -she pointed at John- “if some people come by in the next day or so with a mahogany desk, we don't want it.”

Sherlock had every intention of disallowing anything of Mycroft's to enter 221B. He looked closer at the bags.

“Did he buy you an iPod?” he asked scathingly.

“Yes. I'm debating between taking it back on moral principle or using it because I desperately need a new one.”

“Use it,” Sherlock advised, tossing it to her. “If he is foolish enough to spend his money on _you_ , take advantage of it.”

She blinked at him slowly. “You know what, I'm so tired I don't have the energy to be offended. I'm going to bed.”

“Wait, take the rest of your bags with you.”

“I'll get them in the morning. I have no idea where to put most of the things, and I don't have another hangar for the coat.”

John pursed his lips. “He bought you a coat?”

“Yeah. He was rather unhappy to learn that this was all I had,” she said, gesturing to her second-hand jacket.

Sherlock looked at her funny. She rolled her eyes and waved them both away with a tired hand. “Just leave them. Goodnight.” She left the flat and walked up the stairs.

“Good night, Jack,” John called. Sherlock was quiet.

“Sherlock?”

“She didn't have a coat,” he murmured quietly.

“She does now,” John offered.

Sherlock paused and nodded. “Yes. Yes, of course.”

John watched his friend stare at the bags, unsure of what else to say. What he eventually came up with was, “Well, I'm heading to bed.”

“Good night, John.”

“Night, Sherlock.”

John turned to the stairs to go to his room, but not before he looked at his flatmate one last time. He had a look on his face John couldn't quite place. If he had to give it a name, he would dare to call it pity. 

 


	8. Ciphers and Secrets

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I'm already into the 8th chapter and I haven't gotten to anything too plot-heavy yet. tried to go back and rectify that, plant some seeds for more important stuff, but I'm not sure how well it went. Let me know how I did with that.  
> Enjoy your read!

The next morning presented a new set of challenges. Sherlock had looked into different schooling options for Jack and decided to send her a private day academy. He had pushed her application through and her uniform had been shipped over the weekend. Now Monday, Sherlock decided to tell her and send her off that day.

John had warned Sherlock to tell her on Friday and give Jack some time to adjust to the idea, rather than springing it on her over a plate of toast. The genius didn't listen to him. What John found when he walked into the kitchen was pretty much to be expected.

Sherlock had left the uniform on the table the night before, even though John told him not to, knowing that Jack would get up before them and see it. Jack was reading a stack of papers with her feet propped on the table. The uniform was folded and under her ankles.

She looked up from her papers and smirked at John. “Morning.”

“Morning. What are you doing there?”

“Reading. Eating some Pop-tarts.”

“John, are you working today?” Sherlock asked moving to the living room from “I have some cold cases I would like to go through today, and I could use your he _eeget your feet down off of the table_ , what do you think you are _doing_?!”

John snorted at Sherlock's hypocrisy; he was certain that worse things than feet had been on that table. At least these feet were still attached to someone.

“I'm having breakfast,” she said tartly. She looked at his face and followed his gaze to her feet and added sarcastically, “Oh, you meant _this_?”

“What are you doing to your uniform?”

“Consider it a formal protest.”

“Enough. Get your feet down off the table. You have to _wear_ that uniform.”

“No.”

“What do you mean no?”

“I'll go to school, but not to one that requires a uniform,” she said.

“It's not for you to decide,” Sherlock said testily. “I'm your father.”

“I'm not going to a school with a uniform,” she repeated without moving. “Any school so scared of creative expression that it designates _clothing_ to the students is not anywhere I belong.”

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “John, help me. She's being difficult again.”

“Sherlock, I told you you should'e done this over the weekend, but you refused to listen to me. You could've precluded this if you'd simply let Jack have time to adjust to the idea.”

“Time wouldn't have mattered, John,” Jack told him honestly. “I don't like uniforms. I don't like what they represent. All my life I had to wear a uniform, and it's only recently that I've begun to wear my own clothes. I won't easily give up that freedom.”

“Oh, for God's sake,” Sherlock snapped, walking away. “Don't be so melodramatic. Get your feet _off_ the dining room table, put _on_ your uniform, and stop wasting everyone's time. Despite what you want, you _will_ be going to school today. So _enough_.”

“Enough?” Jack asked smartly, swinging her legs off the table. She had the last bite of Pop-tart with a flourish. “Nonsense. We're just getting started.”

0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0

The fight was moderate by John's terms. There was a rather large amount of yelling and scoffing, but there wasn't much progress. Still, John knew, it could've been worse. Eventually one of them would be angry enough to legitimately throw something, be it a book or a punch, and thankfully today wasn't that day.

In the end, it was a stalemate. Sherlock had tried to talk circles around Jack, but the girl was too smart to be confused in such a way. She, in turn, talked her way through his trickery and somehow made it into an argument about Sherlock's need for a definable caste system to manipulate. Sherlock was in the middle of sputtering indignantly about how he most certainly did _not_ when John had finally had enough.

“Okay, that's it.” John stood up from his chair and came back into the kitchen where the two were fighting. “It doesn't have to be so either-or with you two. There must be some sort of compromise the two of you can come to.”

“I am compromising,” Jack told him. “I'm being agreeable by even consenting to go to school at all. But I won't go to one that requires a uniform.”

“Sherlock?” John prompted. “Is the uniform really all that important?”

“You must wear the uniform if you attend the school,” Sherlock said.

“Why this school?” Jack shot back. “Why do I absolutely have to go to this school?”

“Because I said so.”

“Bull _shit_ ,” she spat, causing both men to startle. “I'm the one who has to go to this place for eight hours every day. Why shouldn't I be allowed to have some say in where I go?”

Both men paused. “Jack does have a point, Sherlock,” John said.

“But I've already found a school for her. If only she would _listen_ to me-”

“Give me one reason why I should,” Jack challenged.

“Because I _said_ so.”

She scoffed. “Oh, come on. You think you're so very clever, I know you can come up with a better excuse than _that_.”

He didn't have a better answer, but he had to say something in response. “Because it is my responsibility to ensure that you are properly educated. The school's credentials are the least appalling I could find.”

Jack made a face she hoped screamed _you utter snob_. “School is _school_. What am I possibly going to learn at this place that I couldn't learn anywhere else?”

“French.”

“I already know French.”

Sherlock smirked. “I'm _sure_ you don't.”

She smirked back. “J'ai étudié Français puisque j'avais cinq ans. Je sais que Français. Et allemand et russe et espagnol et italien et grec,” she said rapidly and perfectly. “I have studied French since I was five years old. I _know_ French. And German, and Russian, and Spanish, and Italian, and _Greek_.”

Sherlock opened his eyes in surprise. She crossed her arms. “What else is this _magic_ school supposed to teach me?”

Sherlock steepled his hands and stared at her with sudden interest. “Chemistry.”

“The chemical equation of Paradichlorobenzine is C6H4C12 and the molecule consists of two chlorine atoms substituted for hydrogen at opposing sites on a benzene ring. Next.”

“History.”

“Of?”

Good question. “Jean François de Saint Lambert.”

John watched on in amazement as Jack spouted the entire personal history of an obscure French poet and military officer. When she was done, John shook his head slowly and said, “fantastic.”

Jack looked at him curiously. “You really think so?”

“Ignore him, he says that all the time,” Sherlock dismissed. “Furthermore, where did you learn all of this?”

“I read,” she told him scathingly. “And I was also taught by the Professors.”

John could hear, based on the way she said it, that 'professors' was capitalized. “The Professors?”

“There were twenty professors who lived with us,” she replied. “They were all PhDs and were tasked with teaching us the curriculum decided by our commissioner.”

“Tell me more about this commissioner of yours,” Sherlock requested. “What do you know about them?”

“It's a her, and not much,” Jack lied. There was no way she could tell Sherlock what she suspected about this woman. The only people she could talk to about it were those that she had grown up with, and she hadn't contacted them yet. She would need to soon. “Just that she was a news reporter, or something.”

“How could you not know?” Sherlock criticized.

“It wasn't allowed,” she retorted.

“What do you mean?”

She laughed. “Nice try, Sherlock. Mycroft has already tried this on me, and he's a good deal smarter than you. There's no way I'm falling for that.”

John chuckled at his friends' thunderous expression. “I'm sure I don't know what you mean,” he replied hotly.

Everyone that wasn't Sherlock smirked. “Right,” Jack replied condescendingly.

Sherlock smirked right back and pulled the conversation back to her schooling. “The fact remains, however, that you must go to school.”

“Fine,” she said. “I'll go get dressed, and we can go look at some today. But I won't go to a school with a uniform, and quite frankly, you can't _make_ me.”

Sherlock bristled at that, the implication that he couldn't control her, but he decided to use this opportunity to make a strategic withdrawal. “I'm sure that I could, but I am willing to be flexible about the uniform. Go get dressed and we'll go look for a new one.”

Jack blinked. “Oh. Well. Alright then.”

She left the room and plodded upstairs. John looked to Sherlock. “What made you change your mind?”

“She slipped up,” Sherlock said triumphantly.

“What?”

“She subconsciously told me things she didn't want me to know about her previous home, John. They wore uniforms, and they were taught a variety of things by PhD Professors. Combined, these things will certainly stand out. I'm willing to let the school go if it will get her to tell me about this commune she grew up on.”

Jack smirked from the top of the stair case where she had paused to listen to him. He'd bought it, hook, line, and sinker. What a fool.

0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0

School searching was an experience. John had to work, so Jack and Sherlock went around all day and looked at the curriculums for different high schools. They just couldn't agree on anything. They'd looked at four that morning that were all passable by Sherlock's standards, but Jack found something to dislike with each of them. Jack threw out a few names from different high schools, but Sherlock shot them down without even considering them. He highly suspected that she was making it difficult just to spite him. He was in a sour mood when they left the last school.

It didn't help when one of Mycroft's damned cars pulled up.

Jack initially didn't get into the car until Sherlock did, unsure if it was actually Mycroft or some imposter. When she did finally get inside, she was surprised to find that Mycroft himself had graced them with his presence.

“Why have you abducted us off the streets, Mycroft?” Sherlock snapped. “We have things to do today that do not involve you.”

“There's no call to be rude, Sherlock,” Mycroft responded icily. “I merely wanted to give my assistance on the matter.”

“Where Jacqueline is schooled is not your decision. It's hardly even hers.”

Jack knew Mycroft had CCTV access, if he was legally allowed to tap his brother's flat. Regardless, it bothered her to be monitored so closely when she was outside. She mentally reminded herself to write a code for a CCTV disrupter on her smartphone tonight. And also to buy a computer.

The car began to move. Jack mentally plotted their route as best she could, using the landmarks she knew. So she was surprised when they turned a corner and she worked out where they must've been heading.

She started laughing. “Really, Mycroft?”

They both looked confused. “What?”

“You got a car to bring us _here_? We could have just walked. It is _literally_ seven blocks away; it's not even worth the gas.”

Mycroft's expression turned slightly disdainful, which for Mycroft meant he was impressed. “You know where we're going?”

“Of course,” she replied.

Sherlock scowled. “Where are we going?”

“Figure it out, Mr. Know it All,” Jack said tartly.

He glared at her. “Your attitude is really not appreciated.”

She simply grinned, happy to know she was getting under his skin.

They arrived at the building less than two minutes later. They stepped out of the car and Jack laughed again at the sight of the building. Sherlock scowled when he saw the familiar castle-like structure. Mycroft had brought them to the college building where Sherlock had almost been poisoned by a cabbie earlier in the month.

Sherlock was annoyed. “Yes, very funny, but this is not a _high school_.”

Mycroft raised an eyebrow at him. “Why do you believe she needs a high school?”

Jack grinned at him. “Seriously? Here?”

“I've set you up with an interview. You'd best hurry; it takes place in twenty minutes.”

She took off running toward the building almost immediately. “Thank you, Uncle Mycroft!”

Mycroft's eyes softened and his mouth twitched, Mycroft's approximation of a smile. Sherlock glared hard at him.

Mycroft noticed. “What?

“Why are you always sticking your nose in where it's not needed?” he hissed.

“I am trying to help, Sherlock. You are underestimating her intelligence. It's obvious that she would test out of any high school curriculum, and if you want her to go to school, then it would have to be at a college.”

He handed Sherlock a small packet of papers from his inside pocket. “The professors are all PhDs in their respective fields, the school is a fifteen minute walk from the flat, and the science programs are top notch.”

Sherlock snatched the papers from his meddlesome brother and stalked toward the building. He hated it when Mycroft was right.

Sherlock walked into the building and was pointed to a set of chairs in the corridor to wait for Jack to finish her interview. He texted his homeless network to pass the time. He had enlisted their help about two weeks before, to watch Jack when she left the flat. He studied the data intensely.

Every day for the past two weeks, Jack had left the flat and walked around London aimlessly. Initially, Sherlock just wanted to know where she was going, but then it became a routine to watch her when she left. She wandered around the nearby streets, and often she would take a bus or a taxi to a location outside the main city. When she got there, she would continue to walk around. The most interesting thing she had done was stop for coffee and check a P.O. box. Sherlock had traced it back and checked what kind of mail it received, but it was nothing more than art supply magazines.

Sherlock pursed his lips as he looked at his phone and pondered his situation. Mycroft had gotten wind of the homeless network's surveillance, he began sending Sherlock short, six-second videos from the CCTV cameras. A few days earlier, Jack had left the flat and taken a rather obscure route, away from all his homeless network. Sherlock had been relying solely on Mycroft's messages. He had received his first quarter-hourly CCTV update from Mycroft, but the second video had never showed up. Sherlock had texted Mycroft about it, but he hadn't responded.

He was still ashamed of what he did next. He had a rough approximation of where Jack had gone, and before he truly realized what he was doing, he had thrown on his coat and was in a cab heading that way. He had walked up and down the street, looking for clues to her location. He followed behind her trail and found where she had to have been, but she wasn't there. His chest had been squeezing uncomfortably, and he was halfway to dialing Lestrade when Jack called him. She was at the flat, and she and John were waiting for Sherlock to order Thai food.

He knew he'd overreacted big time. But he hadn't been thinking clearly, and he _always_ thought clearly. He was beginning to lose his head over Jack, and he didn't like it. Sherlock knew he needed to address this issue, and he needed to do it soon.

Additionally, he was irritated at himself with his lack of progress on her origin case. It had been three weeks; he should have figured out much more by now. He'd gotten a few new facts out of her this morning, but they didn't amount to much. He'd been overly optimistic about what he'd been told, and he realized with dismay that his research skills were practically useless in this matter. Obviously it would take some boning up in hacking to finish this.

He waited for forty-five minutes before they returned. Sherlock heard Jack laughing in the hallway before she appeared around the corner. She was accompanied by the headmaster of the college, a round, balding man with a huge grin on his face and his arm over her shoulders. He introduced himself to Sherlock as Dr. Herring. He clapped Sherlock's shoulder with a familiarity they didn't have, making Sherlock jump and Jack snicker.

“You have yourself a brilliant girl here,” he told Sherlock enthusiastically. “We would love to have her join us here. She would fit right in.”

Sherlock gave him one of those trademark smiles that encompassed his whole face but didn't touch his eyes whatsoever. “I'm sure she would.”

“She should return as soon as possible to fill out some paperwork. When are you available?”

“Not anytime soon, I'd expect,” Sherlock told him primly, just to be contrary.

“I'll be here tomorrow, eight o'clock sharp,” Jack promised the headmaster demurely. The headmaster's features lit up and he waved them out as they left.

It was nearing seven pm. Looking for schools had literally wasted the entire day. Activity was winding down for the day, so finding a taxi was easy. The two Holmeses didn't exchange words on the drive there, as they were both engrossed by their phones. Sherlock as still contemplating Jack, but Jack caught up in her own thoughts about CCTV.

Mycroft had been watching her through his security cameras, as he had been doing for the past two weeks. She left the flat to map London out in her mind, but also to test Mycroft's range. She had finally found a dead zone a few days earlier, but it had been all the way out in South Woodford. It had taken her hours to get there, hopping through different taxis, and in the end Sherlock had ruined it by following after her. She'd run into a cab and called him when she was five minutes from the flat, pretending to order Thai food. She was surprised he'd fell for it, given that the cabbie was swerving through traffic and telling her at great volume about his children. She'd played it off as TV, but still, who pulled a fast one on Sherlock Bloody Holmes?

She tapped on her phone and brought up a map. Small red dots clogged the screen, showing her where the CCTV cameras were in London. The sheer volume of them made her skin crawl. It was becoming more and more apparent that if she wanted any modicum of privacy, she was going to have to take it. To do that, she'd need to turn off some of the CCTV cameras, and to do that, she'd need a computer.

The cab stopped in front of the flat. Sherlock tossed a few pounds at him and swung out of the cab, holding the door open for Jack. She didn't get out.

“Go on ahead,” she told him. “I'll be back later.”

“Later? Where are you going?” he demanded.

She rolled her eyes and reached for the door handle. “Out. I need stuff.” She slammed the door and Sherlock hopped back in surprise. The cab immediately took off.

“Jacqueline!” But she was already around the corner and out of sight. Sherlock rolled his eyes and walked back inside the flat. John was inside, reheating some of Jack's food. He looked up when his flatmate walked in, clearly annoyed.

“Problem?”

“She left,” Sherlock huffed. “And Mycroft got her into a _college_.”

John pursed his lips to conceal his amusement. Most parents would be over the moon to learn that their kid had gotten into a college. Trust Sherlock to be the antithesis of everything he expected.

“Ah, well,” John said. “What are you gonna do? Hungry?”

0-0-0-0-0-0-0

“Can you take me to this address?” Jack asked, passing her phone forward to the cabbie. He took note of the address and handed it back before easing the car into traffic.

Jack tapped on her phone, sending messages and only half paying attention to their route. Like before with Mycroft, she mapped it out in her head. So when they took a left turn instead of keeping straight, Jack looked up in suspicious confusion.

“Shortcut?” she asked tartly.

“They want to talk to you,” the cabbie said.

“I have a _phone_.”

“They need you on a computer.”

“I'm going to go _buy_ one.”

“They would prefer it if this could be traced.”

That piqued Jack's interest. Why would they want their conversation open to the prying eyes? Maybe the information wasn't worth keeping secret. Or maybe it was a strategic move. They had to know that Mycroft was watching; could they be throwing him a bone?

Jack pondered this for the rest of the ride. The cab pulled around to the public library, and Jack got out. “I'm not tipping you,” she snapped at him. The cabbie glared and pulled away.

She flicked her eyes over the ornate building, taking in its details as she had been taught to do.

_3 security cameras on the exterior, covering 270 degrees of the perimeter. Either Mycroft already knows I'm here, or he will in about four seconds. No visible security guards- plainclothes are a possibility, but highly doubted. Most going in are scholarly, some are readers, and the rest are tourists. Weird useless gargoyles on the stairs._

She walked inside and signed her name on the roster. Naturally, she used an alias. Annie Nonimus. She thought Mycroft would appreciate that.

The computers were in center of the room, which stirred her interest even more. Surely they knew that if she was on one of these computers, anyone could look over her shoulder. They must not care. She wondered what was so trivial that they didn't care, no, that they went out of their way to be seen.

She chose a computer that faced away from everyone else, so she'd know when snoops were about. From there it was just a matter of following protocol; she unplugged the speakers, loaded her flash drive (which was on her person at all times), ran the software, rebooted the computer in safe mode, and opened the browser. Then she waited.

The computer was still for a moment, and then a remote user logged on and began controlling her desktop. The cursor dragged itself over to the web bar and typed in an new address. < _gifxvep knf jvmvekvve.com >_

The page reloaded to show a black screen with nothing but a blinking cursor. It blinked twice, and then a message was typed out.

 **Artb zj r xffu erdv. Jyvicftb nflcu rggifmv.** Jack is a good name. Sherlock would approve.

She snorted hard, drawing a glare from the other computer users. A 17 shift mono-alphabetic cipher? If Mycroft had to send this through a decoder, she would lose all respect for him. She typed back, doing the rudimentary math in her head in under a minute.

 **Z nrj fe dp nrp kf slp r evn crgkfg. Yru pfl nrzkvu kve dfiv dzelkvj, nv tflcu yrmv ufev kyzj repnyviv.** I was on my way to buy a new laptop. Had you waited ten more minutes, we could have done this anywhere.

 **Jfiip. Fiuvij reu rcc kyrk.** Sorry. Orders and all that.

 **Nyrk uf pfl nrek?** What do you want?

 **Tflikvjp trcc. Re rjjftzrkv fw flij zj tfdzex kf Cfeufe fe jfdv gvijferc sljzevjj. Kyviv zj r tyretv pfli grkyj nzcc tifjj. Kyvp yrmv svve xzmve vogcztzk zejkiltkzfej kf rmfzu pfl, slk r tfewifekrkzfe drp sv zevmzkrscv. Pfl yrmv wlcc gvidzjjzfe kf uvwveu.** Courtesy call. An associate of ours is coming to London on some personal business. There is a chance your paths will cross. They have been given explicit instructions to avoid you, but a confrontation may be inevitable. You have full permission to defend.

 **Leuvijkffu.** Understood.

 **Ruuzkzferccp, pfli frpplvvlrqhu yrj ivhlvjkvu r jkrklj lgurkv fe pfli dzjjzfe.** Additionally, your benefactor has requested a status update on your mission.

She paused. Fuck. What was she supposed to say, that she was trying to ruin the mission? She clicked her knuckles while she thought.

 **Kvcc kyvd kyrk vmvipkyzex yviv zj wzev. Z'd jvkkczex ze nvcc, yvruzex kf r tfccvxv ze kyv dfiezex. Jyvicftb reu Z riv yrmzex r szk fw r iflxy jgfk, slk Z kyzeb zk nzcc scfn fmvi jffe.** Tell them that everything here is fine. I'm settling in well, heading to a college in the morning. Sherlock and I are having a bit of a rough spot, but I think it will blow over soon.

 **Pfl'iv tvikrze ze kyzj?** You're certain in this?

 **Yv yrj druv yzj uvuztrkzfe kf bvvg dv nzky yzd** _ **hlzkv**_ **tcvri.** He has made his dedication to keep me with him _quite_ clear, she added bitterly.

 **Xffu. Tfekzelv nzky pfli nfib. Kyv vdgcfpvvj rk kyv Rggcv Jkfiv riv vogvtkzex pfl.** Good. Continue with your work. The employees at the Apple Store are expecting you.

The screen went black, and the computer rebooted again, all traces of the previous software deleted permanently. She rolled her eyes and pushed away from the desk. If they knew already that she needed a computer, they had already discussed what computer she was allowed to get with the employees. They would undoubtably be computers that they could monitor her on. It negated the whole damn point. She may as well not even go now.

She walked to the Apple store this time instead of taking a cab; she didn't want to be pulled into any more meetings.The employees were all fawningly polite when she walked in, bordering on fearful, and she knew she would only get to choose from a very limited selection. Jack smirked when they put the MacBooks in front over her. Sure enough, they were all unboxed and completely set up, meaning they already been tapped. Now they were all useless.

She bought the least offensive computer and headed back toward the flat. It was too far a walk, so she hopped on the bus. She studied her phone, looking at the map of cameras with disdain and worry. Then something occurred to her.

She knew from her studies that security cameras took pictures every four seconds, while CCTV cameras in hight traffic areas worked like video cameras. The surveillance cameras on the buildings near the flat were a variety of the two. Three CCTV cameras pointed toward the road, while the others watched sidewalks and corners. But only of them was turned on the alleyway around the corner from the flat, and it was dark enough now that if she retreated into the shadows, she would be invisible to a security camera.

Jack had the sudden urge to trick it, to see if she could make it into the flat without being seen. She still needed to code software on her computer to shut them off completely, but if she could get away without it, she would never have to worry about always having her phone.

At the street around the corner, she got off and stopped at the street corner. Jack pressed herself against the side of a building so she wouldn't be in anyone's way and looked at the shops across the street.

She stared at the camera that was looking her direction. Four seconds passed, and the red light blinked. She counted to four in her head, syncing her counting patterns with that of the camera. Her intuition told her that Mycroft, whether he was still watching or had someone else watching her, would be notified the second she disappeared. She grinned in anticipation and decided to be just a little bit of a cheeky brat.

_One, two, three, **four,** one-_

She blew a kiss to the camera and jumped into the darkness.

Her phone buzzed almost immediately. It was Mycroft. _Whatever are you doing?- MH_

She grinned to herself. Honestly, ditching him should not have been this easy. _**Should I be concerned that you have this number, considering I didn't give it to you?**_

_Where are you?- MH_

She didn't respond, as she was looking at the fire escape on the side of that building and thinking quickly. The cameras were pointed at a 37 degree angle to the ground, and the sliver of light from the streetlamp would illuminate her for three seconds if she climbed it. Calculating the amount of time it would take her to scale the fire escape and ascend to the roof-

If she moved fast enough she could do it.

Jack had to carry her shopping back by the handle with her teeth, but she made it onto the roof without being caught by the cameras. Her phone buzzed, and she ignored it. Screw Mycroft, if he couldn't keep up. She laughed out loud at the exhilaration and wind she felt being up this high. She turned and located the flat's building, the one she would need to get to.

Roof jumping would be the most efficient way to go. There were four buildings in between her and the flat, and she would need to have a running start to make it to the next roof. She tried not to let that bother her as she backed up.

The first building is always the hardest, she reminded herself. She wiped her palms on her jacket, took her bag tightly in her hands, and sprinted to the other edge of the roof. Hop at just the right time, and-

She landed on the other roof as lightly as she could, barely disturbing the aluminum at all. Once she was confident in her abilities, the rest were easy. She got to the roof of the loft and wondered at how she was going to get in without being seen. She couldn't go down to the sidewalk, _obviously_ , and her window wasn't open, so she couldn't swing into it. She paced around on the roof while trying to catch her breath.

There didn't seem to be any other option than going down and using the front door. Dammit. The whole endeavor had been a waste, then. Jack heaved a sigh and began walking to the edge of the roof. She was almost to the edge when she caught her foot on a loose piece of the roof. She shook it off and looked down in annoyance, but then she realized it wasn't a loose piece of roofing. It was a loose tile from the actual roof.

She reached down and gently pried it back. It opened into a dark room that she couldn't see the floor of. Putting down her bag and carefully holding herself back with her legs, she stuck her entire top half into the hole and waited for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. An abandoned dress form caught her eye, and the darkest shadows coalesced into boxes. It was the attic. _Awe_ some.

She tossed her bag first and followed slowly, making sure to replace the tile so the attic wouldn't get wet in the rain. She went down the ladder and returned to her room. Sparrow was still in her cage, and Jack released her happily. Sparrow greeted her with a nose quirk and a soft headbutt to the leg. Jack picked her up and settled them both on bed, where she began the arduous task of transferring data from her Cloud to the computer.

About an hour later she heard footsteps go past her door, stop, and double back again. Her door was lightly pushed open to reveal John's face.

“How the hell- Sherlock, she's up here!” he called.

A set of frantic footsteps ran up the stairs and Sherlock stormed his way into her room. It was obvious by the flush of blood in his face that he had been frantically running. She glanced up from her typing and smirked. “ 'Sup.”

“Would you mind telling me why it was so difficult for you answer _any_ of my text messages, if you've been here all this time?”

She had been jumping across rooftops when she got them. “I just got back an hour ago.”

John's eyebrows wrinkled in confusion. “Why didn't we hear you come up?”

“I didn't use the front door.”

“Wha...then how did you get in?”

She smiled mysteriously at the both of them. “This house still holds a secret, boys.”

They both blinked at each other, and she laughed at their clueless expressions. John chuckled at her mirth. Sherlock frowned harder at the both of them.

“This isn't funny,” he snapped. “I got a frantic text from Mycroft telling me you had disappeared.”

Frantic didn't really seem like Mycroft's style. “Did you really? How frantic?”

Sherlock shoved the phone in her face. _I would highly recommend you get a better internet connection for Jacqueline's new computer. -MH_

Jack raised an eyebrow at Sherlock. “That looks like _frantic_ to you? That looks likemug of hot tea on a rainy Saturday afternoon with a morphine drip.”

“It's as frantic as I've ever seen Mycroft become,” John said. “He saw you with the computer and then you vanished, apparently.”

“Of course I did, John. That was rather the point.”

“You fell of the radar on purpose?” John was impressed that she was able to do it at all.

“Yep.”

“Why?” Sherlock growled.

Jack smirked. “Call it an experiment.”

Sherlock rolled his eyes and her and stalked out. John offered her a wish for sweet dreams and shut the door behind him. Sherlock was in the kitchen, leaning heavily onto the kitchen table with one hand on his chest.

“You okay?” John asked.

“No,” Sherlock snapped. “My pulse is accelerated, I taste iron, and I'm suddenly weak in the knees. I feel like I've-”

“-had a heart attack? Yeah, I know. Comes with the territory of being a father.”

“How would you know?”

“I practically raised Harry, remember? I know what it looks like when someone cares about a child.”

Sherlock's head snapped up from the countertop to glare at John. “What makes you think I care?”

“Oh God please. You couldn't make it look more obvious if you tried.”

“Jacqueline is not here out of my goodwill, John; she is here so I can solve her case.”

“It's been three weeks, Sherlock. Exactly how much progress have you made?”

“I've made _plenty_ of progress,” he lied. “My first task will be to locate the facility.”

“Great,” John deadpanned as he abandoned the kitchen for his bed. “That only leaves the entire continent of Australia.”

 


	9. First Day of School

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I don't really....have much of an excuse for not updating. I had this chapter, it was ready to go, and then life (read that as college) got in the way. But it's here now, yaaaaypleasedon'tbemad!  
> Additionally, I don't know anything about the British education system, so when I say college, I mean secondary education, after all the mandatory schooling is over.

Every day at 6 AM when Jack had been growing up, the children were to get up and run two miles outside. After that, an hour of weight training and sparring would occur, and then the children would go off to their respective studies.The kids started on the regimen when they were as young as six. The commune had bred creatures of habit, forcing the children to get up and do the same thing every day with very little variation until anything else just felt wrong.

So even though Jack didn't need to get up until 7, at 5:45 she opened her eyes.

She relished the fact that she had the option to laze about in bed before rolling off of the mattress onto silent feet. Sparrow snuffled at her from the cage.

“Morning to you too, Sparrow,” Jack murmured. She quickly fed the bunny before waking over to he desk. Her computer hummed as it powered up out of sleep mode. Between her constant software coding and her endless tinkering with security, her computer was often locked in a perpetual state of update. It was rare that she was ever able to use any laptop at its full capacity.

She knew this morning would be different. Today was to be her first day in school, which meant she would need records to give the dean. She knew if she logged in, they would find a way to send those records to her. She logged into the website they used to communicate and navigated her way to her Cloud. There was a message from her benefactors, but it wasn't what she expected;

_Desk drawer._

Confused, Jack pushed the chair away from the desk and looked at her drawer. The numbers on the lock were set to 3-3-4-7, which she set up to notice specifically if they'd been changed. She quickly rotated the numbered dials to 1-3-3-7 and opened the drawer. A file folder was nestled inside, on top of which sat a SIG pro semi-automatic.

Okay.

No, no, _not_ okay. She didn't doubt that they had the capabilities to crack the code to the drawer (they weren't the ones she was trying to keep out), but to do it first they had to get inside flat.

How the hell did they get inside the flat and she not notice?

She turned and looked quickly over every surface of the room. Her lock had been tampered with, (which concerned her because she _shouldn't_ have slept through that,) and there were minute depressions in her carpet that she hadn't left. The front door to the flat was wired to her laptop and it hadn't been tripped, so they hand't come in through the front, so how-

She abruptly remembered the little rooftop escapade from the night before. She saw it all play out like a movie in her head- a tiny figure wrapped in black sashaying across roofs and diving into the attic of 221B, where they would have sprung off their hands and landed as lightly as a speck of dust. Crawling down the hall on all fours, they'd have stopped in front of her door and listened to her sleeping.

Jack suddenly ducked down and checked under the bed. There it was, small as a dime, a remote-activated device that had emitted a tasteless, odorless gas to keep her asleep. She picked it up and licked the edge of it. She could tell by the taste who had mixed it together- he could never stop the bitter residue from forming when he made knock-out gas. He had slipped it under the door, knocked her out, left the materials, and escaped the same way he came in. He was a moron not to clean up after himself, but Jack couldn't berate him too heavily after her own idiocy.

She had danced across rooftops and slipped into the flat without Mycroft noticing, but there was no way they wouldn't have seen. Of course they'd been watching. Of _course_ they'd use that. And she had't thought to put in some kind of alarm system for herself. Why couldn't she think?!

Her hands started shaking. She knew that if he had been ordered to kill her, she could have defended herself, but the next time it happened she might not be too lucky.

Suddenly just standing in her room was unacceptable. Her adrenaline was surging, and she did not have time to lose control right now. She needed to work through it. She needed to move, but exercise would require her to leave the flat. She didn't want to be caught at the front door, and she didn't want to overuse her newest method of escape. If she could she'd never use it at all.

She stretched her arms and legs, restless for a way to calm herself. She paced around in a circle. She clapped her hands. She jumped on her toes and sparred with the air, krav-maga style. She jumped backwards and landed on the palms of her hands, ready to push herself back up, when her eyes locked on to the exposed pipes in the ceiling.

When John walked up the stairs to wake Jack up an hour later, she was hanging upside down on the pipes by her knees, doing crunches with her iPod on. John stopped just short of the door jam and stared at her.

She spared him a glance and pulled out an earbud, but she didn't stop her workout. “Hi.”

“ _Why_.”

“Antsy.” Sweat beaded off her forehead. John could tell she had been doing this for quite some time. “Needed something to help get rid of the energy.”

“Why didn't you just come downstairs?”

“I woke up at 5. Didn't want to wake you. I figured _you_ would need the sleep, at least.”

“Hmmm.Well, thank you for your concern, but I'm a deep sleeper. You don't need to hole yourself up for me if its driving you mad.”

Jack stopped crunching and laughed. “Thanks. Good to know this won't be a regular thing.”

“John!” Sherlock shouted from the bottom of the stairs. “Is she up?”

“She is, and she doesn't need to be woken up like a four year old!” she shouted back.

Sherlock climbed the stairs. “John thought that- _why,_ why are you hanging from the ceiling?” He put his hands on his hips and pursed his lips. John thought he abruptly looked very tired.

Jack smirked at him. “Exercise. Nothing says good morning like blood pumping fast.”

“Get down from there this instant,” Sherlock ordered.

She rolled her eyes but knew it was time to get ready anyway. She swung herself a bit and flipped off the bar, landing perfectly on her feet. It would've been a flawless dismount if she hadn't stumbled as the blood suddenly gushed into the rest of her body. She grabbed her head and swayed.

Both men surged toward her with the intent to catch her, but Sherlock made it there first. Strong hands grabbed her elbows. “Are you alright?” he demanded.

“Head rush. I'm good.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, yes, I'm fine. Let me go.”

Sherlock reluctantly pulled his arms away and was secretly relieved to see that she didn't sway. John grinned at the obvious care Sherlock was beginning to have for Jack, though he knew the detective would never admit it.

Jack rolled her shoulders forward and threw her arms across her chest to stretch them out. “You mind leaving now? I do still need to get dressed, you know,” she sneered.

Sherlock's face morphed from mildly concerned to his default expression of vaguely annoyed as he stomped out of the room. John followed behind, chuckling into his coffee.

The morning commenced unsuccessfully and only seemed to get worse from there. Sherlock bitched and moaned to John about the fact that Jack took fifteen minute showers, whereas he believed it should only take four minutes to become sufficiently clean. When he heard the water turn off, Sherlock tapped his foot impatiently as he waited for Jack to leave the bathroom. What he didn't understand was that Jack needed to blow dry her hair, which took another ten minutes, and then meticulously apply makeup, which took fifteen more. When Jack finally stepped out of the bathroom, it had been roughly forty-five minutes and there was no more hot water. Sherlock was livid.

It came to a head when Jack came back down the stairs, fully dressed in a blue and green dress. It didn't matter that she was also wearing a cardigan, that she had all the vital areas covered, that she was well within the school dress code, or that she was wearing tights; what mattered to Sherlock was that her dress was four inches above her knees. When she sat at the table to have breakfast, the skirt rode up to expose the bottom half of her thigh.

“Go upstairs and change,” Sherlock ordered.

Jack spread Nutella on her toast and smirked. “I don't think so.”

“Jacqueline, I can practically see your entire upper leg. If I can see it, others can see it.”

“Well if you and _others_ can see it, and it bothers you, maybe you all need to stop looking.”

“It is entirely inappropriate.”

“It's a dress. If my clothes are causing such a distraction, that's not my fault. People need to learn to keep their eyes to themselves, and if they can't, they can kiss my ass.”

Sherlock looked at John and begged for help with his eyes. John shook his head, enjoying this way too much. Sherlock was surprisingly bad at being stern and it was too funny to mess up. Sherlock glared at John and sputtered, two beats late, “Watch your language.” Jack smirked.

There was a knock at the door and the trio turned to see Mycroft leaning on his umbrella. “Morning, all.”

Sherlock scowled while John and Jack dutifully replied, “Good morning, Mycroft.”

“What do you want?” Sherlock asked.

“I'm here to collect my niece for her first day of school.”

“I have it perfectly under control, Mycroft.”

“Oh, yes, I'm certain that she would be safe being driven in taxi cab by a two-time ex-con,” Mycroft sneered.

“Please, like you haven't done an extensive background check on every cabbie within a five-mile radius.”

Mycroft didn't deny it, which worried Jack slightly. She stood and picked her bag up off the back of the chair. “Actually, it's only about twelve blocks. I was just going to walk-”

“Absolutely not!” The Holmes brothers looked at each other in surprise as they spoke in unison. Mycroft recovered first. “It's much too far a walk. I'm happy to drive you. It will give me the chance to ensure you have a pleasant first day.”

Jack could tell Mycroft wasn't going to let it go, so she conceded with a sigh.“Alright, let's go.”

Oh like hell was Sherlock letting that happening. “ _I'm_ her father, and _I_ will take her to school.”

“You needn't be so hostile, Sherlock. I didn't think you would be interested in accompanying Jacqueline to school.”

“You always presume to know what I'm thinking, Mycroft. That has _always_ been your problem.”

Mycroft bristled in that way that he did, where he didn't move at all save for a twitch of his upper lip. Jack rolled her eyes. She just wanted to get on with it.

She stepped up between them. “Allow me proffer a suggestion that neither of you will come up with for at least twenty minutes: why don't you both come?”

Jack was shocked by the look the two brothers gave each other. It was a look that said the thought actually hadn't crossed either of their minds. And they claimed to be geniuses. Good lord.

“Are you sure that's a good idea?” John asked.

“I'm just trying to move this day along. This argument could easily take thirty minutes, and I don't have it to spare.”

Sherlock sniffed and walked away, heading to his room to dress. John was pulling on his jacket when he got a text on his phone. He checked it quickly and then huffed a laugh.

“Well it looks like I woke up for nothing. I'm not needed at the clinic today.”

“Wanna come with?” Jack asked with a smirk.

“Seriously?”

“Sure. May as well make a day out of this.”

0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0

The main building at the college was a monolith, made of stone and carved in a Gothic style. The entire structure had a vague church-like feeling. It reminded Jack that she hadn't been to any sort of worship service in years. Her absence didn't come from laziness, but rather a lack of any God to pray to. She wondered if Holmeses were particularly religious people while they waited to see the headmaster.

The four of them made an interesting tableau outside the headmaster's office. Mycroft and Sherlock sat on either side of her, as they had been in the car ride here. Sherlock was stewing in thinly-veiled annoyance, shooting Mycroft death glares at regular intervals. Mycroft simply ignored Sherlock's dramatics by pursing his lips and twirling his umbrella. Jack partially expected him to start examining his nails. John sat at the edge of the bench with a magazine and a smile.

The door to the headmasters office opened and Dr. Herring's head rounded the corner. “Ms. Piper! Right on time. Come in.”

The four of them stood. The headmaster blinked. “Oh. All of you.”

He stepped back and allowed them to enter the office. There were only two chairs, so John propped himself against the wall. Jack took one, and Mycroft and Sherlock had an epic staredown for the remaining chair. Jack just rolled her eyes and crossed her legs in her seat.

Dr. Herring straightened himself up in his chair. “I'll try to keep this brief so you may get to class as soon as possible.”

“Take care that you do,” Mycroft said from his perch on his newly won chair. Sherlock glowered behind him.

“Certainly. First things first, we'll be needing a copy of your transcripts from your high school. I imagine that, due to your age, you do not have a diploma to speak of?”

“Not technically, no, but my mother homeschooled me,” Jack lied effortlessly. Three pairs of confused eyes landed on her and were studiously ignored. “I have the paperwork that proves I've got all the qualifications I need to attend this university.”

She pulled a manila folder out of her backpack and slid it across his desk. Dr. Herring pulled out the papers and scanned his eyes over them. Everything was in order- she had verified that in the car, when she was sure looking at them wouldn't send her into a panic.

Sherlock was suddenly right at Jack's ear. “Your mother died when you were twelve,” he whisper-hissed.

“I took the placement tests when I was ten,” she hissed back. “And do kindly _shut up_.”

“It would appear that everything is in order,” Dr. Herring spoke up. “And very impressive, might I add. We'll also be needing medical records from-”

“Got it covered.” She slid another folder of papers across the table. Her benefactors were thorough.

Dr. Herring chuckled. “What if I asked for A-level results?”

Another folder smacked on top of the previous two. The headmaster smirked.

“Well, I'd imagine that should cover it. I didn't anticipate that you'd have everything already, but I would expect nothing less from Mycroft Holmes' niece.”

Mycroft looked pleased. Sherlock rolled his eyes and contemplated shoving him out of the chair.

“In any case, I do believe we're done. There is still some standard paperwork to fill out- your current address, emergency contacts, the like- but I'm sure your father can fill this out so you can get to class.”

“Yes, _I_ will do that,” Sherlock said with a victorious look shot at Mycroft.

Jack stood and Dr. Herring handed her a slip of paper. “Take this to room 49 on the second floor and tell them you're new. You'll meet with an academic advisor who will help you create a schedule.”

She took the paper and turned to her entourage. “See you later. John, try not to let them murder each other.”

In room 49 she met with an excited guidance counselor who gave Jack a map of the entire campus. The two of them created a schedule consisting mainly of art classes, with a European history class thrown in for good measure. No science- Jack hoped it would annoy Sherlock. Then Jack was escorted to her first class of the day.

It was cute to try and watch the professors teach her what she already knew. The lectures were tedious; her handlers (because really, there was no better term for what those people had been to her) has seen to it that she knew everything she needed. Granted, the things she needed to know were things like how to cheat truth serums and which points were the weakest on a man's body. Still, it was odd to listen to a lecture and not expect some form of punishment if she couldn't answer the questions correctly.

The art classes were surprisingly relaxing. All her professors played music while they created their various works, and Jack had a lengthy discussion about the music choices with one professor after class. She had a list of new artists to try when she got back to the flat.

But the day didn't get _really_ interesting until her break between classes. She had a two hour gap with nothing to do, so she headed to the library with her laptop to get some coding done. Unfortunately, her bag was old and in a sorry state of disrepair. Jack was the sort to keep something until it broke, which it did.

She was walking outside when the strap broke and her brand new computer tumbled to the ground and slid on the dewy grass. It didn't break, but it was enough to make her grouchy. She grumbled to herself as she crouched down on her knees to pick up her computer. It had slid underneath a small bush, so she had to flatten her chest against the ground and stick her ass in the air like a stretching cat to reach it.

“If I had a nickel for every time I've walked in on you in this _exact_ position.” a voice teased.

Jack looked up at the familiar cadence and shrieked with glee. “Megan!”

The girl in question was leaning against the wall, observing Jack with a wry grin on her face. She was wearing a black hoodie over jeans and Converses, the most inconspicuous outfit ever designed by man. Her boyish haircut was longer than Jack remembered it, and she herself had grown by nearly three inches. Her brown skin was even darker, and Jack could see tan lines around her eyes. Megan pulled her earbuds out of her ears and engulfed Jack in a bear hug.

“God, how long has it been?” Megan asked.

“Seven months or so,” Jack said. Their last approved contact had been Megan's last email in March.“I'm Jacqueline now, by the way. Call me Jack.”

“Good name. I'm sure your father approves.”

Jack smirked at her. “You know, you're the second person to tell me that.”

Megan laughed. “I see. How did the chat go?”

Jack held up her laptop and made a face. “I bought a computer.”

“A Mac? Why didn't you get a PC?”

It had crossed Jack's mind. “Macs have faster processors. Better for coding.”

“Are you here to learn more advanced coding? I am.”

“Really?” Jack teased, surveying the girl from head to toe. “I would've thought you were tailing someone.”

“Trying to lose one, in fact. Daddy is _far_ too protective.”

Jack smirked. It seemed like Megan's mission was going well if her father was so scared of losing her that he had her followed in college. “How long did it take?”

“Poor bastard lost me within ten minutes. He's absolutely fired.”

Megan and Jack laughed together. It was nice to be talking to someone who had grown up the way she had, someone who understood where Jack was coming from. Jack hadn't realized quite how much she was missing her friends.

“Eat with me?” Megan asked.

“Absolutely.”

The cafeteria had a lot to offer, and while Jack was content with just meatloaf, Megan loaded up two plates: one with pizza and one with french fries. Jack just smirked at her when she sat down.

Megan caught the look and immediately defended herself. “I run it off every day, I deserve it.”

Jack couldn't argue with that logic, and she spent most of their visit stealing fries off her plate. Megan and Jack decided to end their lunch by indulging on cinnamon buns. They ate their snacks with relish and sat in companionable silence.

“So how is yours going?” Megan asked suddenly. “You let me drone on and on about my dad, but you haven't said a single thing about yours.”

Jack swallowed her wad of bun and coughed. “It's fine.”

Jack was trained to be a top-notch fabricator, as they all were, but they were also trained to ferret out top notch lies. Megan raised an eyebrow. “Seriously? We're doing _this_?”

Jack sighed and pulled a hand through her hair. “I can tell you, but you wouldn't be able to tell anyone else. No matter _who_ asks.”

“Girl, I have plenty of secrets to keep,” Megan admonished. “I'm sure one more won't tip the stack. Talk to me.”

Jack measured Megan with her eyes. It wasn't that she didn't trust Megan; it was just that, for all her bravado, she was easily the worst at keeping secrets when under interrogation. If they asked about this, Megan would fold like a cheap table, and that wasn't the kind of data leak Jack needed right now.

Still, Jack found herself unusually willing to talk about it. Megan wasn't ideal, but Megan would understand. Most importantly, Megan was _here_.

“I found my father two weeks ago,” Jack said slowly. “His name is Sherlock Holmes, and he works as a consulting detective. Sometime he partners with Scotland Yard.”

“I've heard of that guy,” Megan supported. “What else?”

“He's in the habit of experimenting on body parts in the kitchen. They end up in the refrigerator all the time.”

Megan chewed on her straw and lightly sucked her lemonade through it. “Urg, he sounds like Dr. Aaron. Hey, do you remember when-”

“I asked him for my emancipation.”

Megan choked and threw herself forward with the force of her coughing. “Good _lord._ You did what?”

“I'm trying to get him to emancipate me.”

Megan looked shocked. More than that, Megan looked _scared_. “You're jeopardizing your mission. You realize that, right? Why?”

“What was your clue?” Jack asked instead of answering.

Megan blinked. “What?”

“When they released you, they gave you a clue to help you find your father. What was it?”

Megan just looked at her, not understanding. “A broken compass.”

“How long did it take you to find your father based on that?”

“About four months. What does that have to do with-”

“I got an address,” Jack interrupted.

Megan ogled her. “ _What?!_ ”

“They gave me his address,” Jack repeated. “It took me ten minutes to find out where he lived, and it only took that long because I had to wait for a computer at the library.”

Megan sat back and regarded her friend. “Christ Almighty, girl. Someone wanted you to find him.”

“And I think I know why. It has something to do with my commissioner.”

Megan's eyes twitched. She looked slightly sick. “We're not allowed to know _anything_ about them. You know that. Jack, what the hell are you doing?”

Jack looked at her friend sharply. “Trying to save us all. Because if I'm right, our lives are all in danger. Everyone we've ever known will go down for this.”

“What the fuck does that mean?”

Jack told Megan what she had done and why she had done it. It was a long story that carried them through the next two hours. As she was nearing the end, Megan shifted in her chair so that one hand was on her stomach. Jack hoped she wouldn't vomit. By the end of it her friend was shell-shocked.

“Jesus, Mary and _Joseph_.”

“Okay, is your dad Catholic? That's like the third time you've done that.”

“What the hell are you going to do?”

“I'm trying to get the hell out of here,” Jack responded. “But my father is interested in finding out more about the academy, and he's not letting me leave until he knows something.”

“And you can't just leave?” Megan offered. “Take your stuff and go tonight?”

“He'd look for me,” Jack said bitterly. She knew without fail that if Sherlock didn't solve this before she left, it would only be a matter of time before she was brought back. Besides, they knew she'd found him now. To disappear on him would defeat the entire purpose of what she was trying to accomplish.

“Jack, I have to ask; why did you tell him all that stuff about us?” Megan demanded. “I mean, I know we were allowed to and everything, but if you had done your research as thoroughly as you say you did, then you knew he would eat it up. Why didn't you lie to him?”

“Because _they_ lied to _me_. They told me that no case would be important enough for him to take me in. I didn't bother lying because I was told I wouldn't have to. Too many lies gets complicated, and I don't lie if I don't have to. Besides, something else is going on with him. He doesn't need me to solve this; I don't know why he's still got me here.”

Megan looked at her funny. “Do you think he's starting to care about you?”

Jack blinked at her friend. “I don't understand the question.”

Megan would have pressed the issue, but Jack's free period was up. The two girls exchanged numbers and Jack gave Megan one last hug. “I'll text you later, once I've got everything set up,” Jack promised and turned to walk away.

Then she caught sight of the camera and backtracked. Megan had been walking away, but she stopped when she heard Jack's footsteps return. “Jack?”

Jack gently took hold of Megan's arm and turned her head so her lips were at Megan's ear. In order to keep the information from Mycroft's lip readers, she whispered in Mandarin. “There's something I should mention.”

“Everything okay?”

“Mycroft Holmes. My father's brother.”

Megan blinked. And then she gasped. “Shit. _Shit_. _Mycroft_ Holmes? The king of half the political world?”

“Yes. He wants to know everything, and he's not getting it from me. He watches me all the time now. So he absolutely saw this meeting. He'll look to you next. You're covered?”

“Of course I'm covered. Why would you even ask?”

Jack relaxed. “Yeah. Yeah, I know. I just needed to ask.”

She moved to let go of Megan, but Megan grabbed Jack's wrist in response. Megan looked determined. “Hey. If you need help with any of this, let me know, okay? I can help.”

Hell no was she involving Megan. Involving anyone, for that matter. She would rather fail at this and be killed for it that bring someone else down with her. Megan saw this on her face and talked over Jack's refusal.

“Jack, I _want_ to. You're my friend, one of the few people on this Earth capable of such a thing. And if you really mean it when you say we could all go down for this, then I have a stake in the success of it. We all do.”

“But if I'm wrong and I get caught, you know what will happen,” Jack whispered.

Megan's eyes flashed, bright with panic, but it was gone in an instant. She threw Jack a cheeky grin instead. “Then don't get caught.”

 


	10. Legally Blonde

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soooo.....the amount of time you guys waited for this piddly chapter is actually kind of embarassing.  
> I've been having a rough year, and with school and my job and everything else, all my writing just kind of ground to a halt. But it's summertime, and with that comes a hell of a lot of free time. Expect more of this in the future!

Sherlock's text was short and to the point.

_At the bank with John. Meet after school. -SH_

Then an address. Jack read it with a raised eyebrow. The text had been sent ten minutes ago, and it would take her another fifteen to get to that address, provided that street traffic was minimal. He wouldn't still be at the bank, right? It didn't take twenty minutes to withdraw money.

She entered the front office and smiled at the woman behind the desk. “Good afternoon, Ms. Janice,” Jack greeted. “I'm just here to drop off my first day evaluation.”

“I'll take that,” the receptionist said. “Have a nice day, Ms. Holmes.”

“Goodbye.” Jack left.

Then she came back in. “Sorry, no, what did you say?”

Ms. Janice looked confused. “I said, 'have'-”

“No, no, did you call me Ms. _Holmes_?”

“...yes?”

“My last name is _Piper_. Not _Holmes_ , _never_ Holmes.” Ms. Janice looked shocked, and Jack realized that she may have been yelling.

“B-but it says here on your transcripts-” Jack snatched the paper out of the poor woman's hands and scanned the document. And there it was, in Sherlock's blocky lettering. _Holmes._ It made her see red.

“Get Dr. Herring on the phone. Right _now_.”

0-0-0-0-0-0-0

John wondered what he was doing here. He was never useful in these instances, he knew that. Why Sherlock insisted he come was a mystery. All he could do was stand in the lobby and try not to appear too idle. From his vantage point right by the front door, John saw Jack when she came in. When she noticed him, she crossed over the floor , bag swinging hard from her shoulder. He took in her walk and her expression and realized immediately that she was furious.

“Hello, John.” Her voice was tight with controlled anger.

“Jack. How was your first day at college?”

“Amusing. Where's Sherlock?”

“Dunno. He told me to wait here, and that he'd be right back. In retrospect, I don't know why I'm still standing here; we both know he's gone.”

On any other day, Jack probably would've smirked and agreed, but today it just pissed her off. Sherlock lived in his own little world, didn't he? “Well, let's go find the fucker, then.”

John blinked at her angrily retreating profile before scampering after her. Jack stalked down the hallway with a vengeance, leaving onlookers in her wake. He wouldn't be surprised if people on the floor under them were looking up at the ceiling in confusion.

“Why are you two here anyway?” she snapped at him. “This isn't a bank you can draw money from.”

“Sherlock got called in to investigate a potential security breach,” John wheezed. “Last night at around one, one of the vacant offices was broken into. Someone broke in and left some graffiti in a man's office without being caught on the video camera.”

“Which office?”

John pointed her in the direction of the office. She walked into the office and glanced at the graffiti on the wall.

 _Horizontal yellow line, Michigan propellant. Potentially a message simply in its existence, or it could mean something more. Morse code?_ Her mind whirled through the possibilities.

“Pillars,” Jack quipped.

“What?”

“The message can only be read from a certain angle, John. The man who owns this office wasn't here last night, but the message was left in the dead of night. So whomever it was left for was here last night and could see this office from theirs. Those pillars-” she pointed at the two rather oddly-placed supports “-block the view from practically every angle save one.”

Jack stepped into the busy island of desks and walked unerringly toward an interior office. She glanced at it quickly before snatching the sign with the name on it out of the wall. “Van Coon.”

“What?”

“The message was left for a man by the name of Van Coon.”

“How do you know?” Sherlock asked anxiously.

John jumped, hating the way Sherlock always materialized out of shadows. Sherlock had his hands in his pockets, slightly leaning forward and focusing his intent focus on Jack. His face was stoic, but his eyes were deeply impressed.

She glared at him. “The same way you know.”

A smartly-dressed man with a portly middle and slicked back hair approached them. “Well then, what do you think?”

“The message was left for Van Coon,” Sherlock said confidently. “We need to talk to him. Obviously.”

“He won't be in until his shift,” the man told them. “Midnight to nine.”

“Too long to wait,” Sherlock scoffed. “We'll need to seek him out, obviously. Give me his address.”

“How will that help you find the security breach?”

“Van Coon might be able to tell us who left him the message. Once we know who, we can learn how. _Obvi_ \- my _word_ , it's like I'm talking to a _wall_.”

The man in the suit didn't appreciate that comment, but he didn't try to verbally engage him. He just rolled his eyes and scoffed. His lack of fury told Jack they knew each other, or at least were on familiar terms. The man obviously knew how futile it was to get into an argument with Sherlock.

“Who are you?” Jack asked. The three men looked over at her in surprise.

“Stay out of this, Jacqueline,” Sherlock ordered.

The man smirked. “Sebastian Wilkes. Director of the trading floor. And you?”

“Jack Piper. Sherlock's hostage.”

“That stopped being cute five days ago,” Sherlock snapped at her.

Sebastian's eyebrow rose up. “What does that mean?'

John decided to intervene. “Ah, this is Jack, Sherlock's daughter.”

“Who didn't need to be here,” she finished, glaring at Sherlock.

Sebastian looked between the pair of them and smirked. “No. Seriously. Who are you?'

“Do I like I'm in a joking mood?” Jack snapped at him.

Sebastian took in her rigid shoulders and felt his jaw slowly unhinging. “I- no, you, you can't-”

“Bored,” Jack announced in a loud voice. She turned to Sherlock. “You. I'm pissed at you.”

“Why?”

“Why do you think, Mr. _Holmes_?” she spat. “You just walk around doing whatever the hell you want to do all day long, don't you?” When he still looked confused, she rolled her eyes. “My school records. You can't just change my name without asking me.”

“I didn't change your name,” he argued. “Holmes is your last name. I am your father.”

“What fucking difference does that make?” Jack screeched. John took a step back. “You provided some of my genetic code, and now you think you have some say in my name? You don't get to just take it and do whatever you damn well please with it. It's my name, and I'll decide when it changes, thank you very fucking much!”

All the noise around them stopped as the workers stopped what they were doing to look up and see who was causing such a racket.

“What?!” Jack snapped at all of them. Work picked up double time.

If Sebastian had had any doubts that Jack was Sherlock's daughter, her sure as hell didn't have them anymore. “Could you move this argument into a less distracting venue? My people are trying to work.”

“Oh, don't worry,” Jack said. “The argument is over. I'm going back to the flat.” She spun on her heel and stalked away.

Sherlock followed behind her, annoyed. He didn't have time for this...illogic. His time would be much better spent trying to find Van Coon, but he had the unstoppable urge to correct her.

“I didn't put Holmes as your last name to exert my authority over you,” he snapped. Jack stopped and looked at him, eyes rolling and arms crossing. “I said it was your last name to avoid unnecessary confusion. You are _obviously_ my child, you look just like me. Why shouldn't we have the same name?”

She considered that. “I see. Yes. You're absolutely right.”

She turned and continued stomping away. Sherlock felt the rare itch of confusion at the back of his brain, unsure of what to think of her response. He deduced from the slant of her shoulders and the power of her gait that she was clearly on her way to do something; storming away wouldn't have taken that much force. What she was going to do, he couldn't begin to guess.

Though in retrospect, he should have see it coming.

-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0

Sherlock's mind was spinning when they returned to 221B. He needed to get into contact with Van Coon, and first he needed to get the address. He flew up the stairs to the flat and threw the door open, eyes zeroing in to his laptop on the couch-

-where Jack was sitting with a magazine and blonde hair.

He froze.

Her hair was blindingly yellow-almost _white_ \- and completely straightened out to give her more length. The dye job was so thorough that, even upon examination of her roots, he could see no trace of the black it used to be. She idly twirled a strand of it between her fingers as she turned the page of the magazine. John came up behind Sherlock and whistled at the state of Jack's hair.

She blinked, and then looked up at them. She took in Sherlock's stance and his facial expression and smiled in victory. “Evening.”

“What did you do?” he couldn't help asking. God, she'd even dyed her _eyebrows_.

“You made an apt observation,” she replied calmly. “People _would_ assume that we were related, as we do share many of the same physical qualities. So I decided to rectify the problem.”

She stood up and tossed her hair, letting it fan out so they could get the full effect. “ _There_. You no longer have a point. I may as well be called Jack Watson now.”

A plethora of emotions he was unused to feeling coursed through Sherlock as he decided how to respond. Outrage, indifference, all of it flowed through his mind. He wasn't sure exactly how he should be feeling in this moment.

But he couldn't help the odd wave of... _disappointment_ that he felt, nor the confusion that went along with it. Why should Jack's reluctance to identify as his daughter bother him? He filed it away in the left wing of his mind palace to consider later.

Not knowing how else to respond, Sherlock fell back to his crutch; criticizing people. “Irrationality doesn't suit you,” he snapped. “Nor does blonde hair.”

Jack smirked as he turned and stormed away from the pair of them, striding up to John's room to get John's laptop. John sighed, knowing he would hear about the contents of his computer shortly.

“Who did your hair?” he asked her.

“I have many skills, John. Does it surprise you to know that bleaching hair is in my _repertoire_?” she said cheekily.

“I think you may have hurt his feelings.”

“I don't believe Sherlock has feelings to be hurt.”

“I think he might surprise you.”

“I'm trying to make a point. John, he is _lying_. He has come up with a tidy solution for his actions, but the truth of the matter is that Sherlock changed my name out of spite at Mycroft and in an attempt to claim me. The more attached he becomes, the more difficult my plea for emancipation becomes.”

“Why do you want to become emancipated so badly?”

Jack could only stare at him. “Are you joking?” He didn't answer.

“Seriously, are you _joking_ right now? I've been here less than a month and already I've had an argument about my pet, an argument about my comings and goings, I've been shoved into a school to learn skills I _don't_ need, and I'm anticipating another argument when Sherlock finds out I didn't enroll in any of the science classes at the university. Sherlock is, by nature, a controlling person. I am not. We don't mix, and eventually he is going to go too far and I will _snap_.”

“You're antagonizing him, Jack. He won't push quite so hard if there's some give and take between the two of you.”

“That's what you said two days ago.” And look how well that turned out. “This isn't about give and take. He needs to learn that I'm not his to be controlled.”

Heavy stomps echoed through the room, causing them both to look up. They could hear Sherlock loudly muttering to himself, and John winced at the sound of something heavy hitting the ground.

“That better not have been my laptop,” he sighed.

“And to think, that's all because of a little box from Revlon.” Jack gathered her things and picked up a bag that John noticed by the couch.

“I'm going to the library to begin some studying.” John received a consoling pat on his shoulder. “Write up the obituary for your computer, and do text me when His Highness is over his temper tantrum.”

0-0-0-0-0-0-0

Museums were eerie places at night.

Jack disapproved of the whole ordeal anyway; a museum was nothing but a tomb, showing off the stolen artifacts of glorified grave robbers. The only part of the museum worth thinking about was how the artifacts even got here.

Eddie Van Coon was a tradesman who worked almost exclusively with Chinese businesses. That in mind, Jack had looked over the reasons his last three trips and found that they were all covered under the umbrella of research. Clearly he was up to something else. That, coupled with the Hang Zhou numerals on the wall in Van Coon's office, indicated that Van Coon was participating in organized crime of some kind.

Shuffling through papers on the work dest in front of her, Jack confirmed what she'd long suspected- in the past year, the museum had taken in about a dozen prime Chinese artifacts from different auction houses. The artifacts were always genuine, and always brought over by a anonymous donor.

Anonymous donor? Chinese artifacts? The conclusion was obvious; a smuggling ring was slowly bringing the last of the artifacts from centuries old Chinese dynasties into London. Given that the artifacts were exclusively Chinese, it had to be the Black Lotus. Any criminal worth their salt had heard of them.

Van Coon had been an obvious pick for a foot soldier; in and out of China all the time, and never questioned because of his job. If the Black Lotus was involved, then the message was a warning, and by this point Van Coon was obviously dead.

And this woman, this Soo Lin, she would be next, if the mark across the statue in the vault was anything to go by.

Footsteps echoed from the corridor outside the doors. Jack put the papers away and calmly sat up straight. Showtime.

To her credit, Soo Lin didn't scream.

0-0-0-0

The little blonde girl sitting behind her desk didn't _look_ like a threat, but Soo Lin knew enough to know that looks meant absolutely nothing.

The girl was tiny. She had her feet propped up on one of the lighting tables, one arm tossed over the back of the chair, and a small teacup in the other hand. Soo Lin recognized it as part of the tea set she was working to restore. Soo Lin's hands itched to snatch it back before it was ruined.

“You can't possibly expect me to believe that you can save these pots with just a bit of tea,” the girl said, idly twirling the cup in her fingertips. “The very foundation of the the clay is beginning to fall apart.”

Soo Lin swallowed. “You would be surprised what hot water can do to change the surface of the clay.”

The girl stood, returning the teacup to its set. “I don't believe I would be. As a lump of clay myself, I know firsthand the affects of a little... _heat_.”

A hand was offered. “Jack Piper. You must be Soo Lin.”

They exchanged a timid handshake. “Why are you here?” Soo Lin demanded. She tried to sound unaffected. It was a poor effort.

Jack blinked at her. “Because someone is going to kill you, I think. And I think you already know that.”

0-0-0

The two young women walked down the small hallway, traveling deeper into the bowels of the storeroom. “An immigrant from China at 15, penniless with no family to speak of. I respect the courage such a move must have taken,” Jack offered.

Perhaps coming right out and saying that Soo Lin was a target hadn't been the right way to go. After taking about ten minutes to convince her that _no_ , Jack was not the one sent to do it, Jack led Soo Lin toward the back of the storeroom.

“I had no other choice,” Soo Lin replied. “I was starving on the streets in China. There was no way for me to support myself alone, and no place for an orphan.”

Jack glared at her suddenly. “I'm risking my neck here trying to warn you; the least you could do is not lie to me.”

Soo Lin seemed confused. “I'm not-”

“Save it. I was trained much more effectively than you were to be able to spot a lie.”

“Why do you think I'm lying?”

Rather that giving a verbal answer, Jack strode ahead of her. A large statue covered by a sheet was pushed off to the side, looking for all the world like an arbitrary piece in storage. Jack knew better. She suspected Soo Lin did too.

The sheet was ripped away to reveal a woman made of marble. The statue stared off into the distance, standing _contrapposto_ , with a serene expression carved into the contours of her face. She didn't seem to mind that her body had been used to send an omen of death.

A harsh yellow line of spray paint cut across the eyes; another, just above the breasts; and what looked to be an eight three-fourths of the way completed. What would simply look like graffiti to anyone else had rendered Soo Lin into pale shock.

“The most important rule of lying is to remain calm when you're caught in it,” Jack said lightly, letting the sheet fall to the ground and taking up a spot next to Soo Lin. “Thank God you're not a spy.”

“Why are you doing this?” Soo Lin whispered. “Why are you helping me?”

“I'm looking for information about some dangerous people. They're coming to London, and I suspect they'll come for you. It would be a shame for you to end up dead before you were useful.” An awkward silence was all Jack needed to know she had messed up somewhere in there. “...no offense.”

“I'll tell you anything you want to know. Just please, please don't let them kill me.”

“If you do exactly what I say, I can keep you safe.”

“What do you need me to do?”

“Tell me the names of everyone involved in the European side of the Black Lotus smuggling trade.” Jack ignored the look of shock on Soo Lin's face at the mention of the criminal gang.

“If I tell you who they are, I will be killed.” Soo Lin's voice, her hands, everything about her was shaking.

“Honey, they're coming for you anyway. If I don't know who they are, you're only making it easier for them to get to you,” Jack drawled.

Soo Lin covered the statue again. She couldn't bear to look at the message anymore. “Okay. Okay. I'll tell you what you need to know.”

“Good.” A pause, and then Jack said, “Oh, and before I forget.” Soo Lin turned around and was presented with a phone.

On the screen was a photo of a woman of about thirty years of age. Her hair was brown and straight, tucked up fashionably into a bun. She was wearing a collared button-up. Sunlight from a window behind the photographer landed on her fair skin and shadowed the contours of her unsmiling face. Everything about this woman was arbitrary, workaday, normal...

...except her _eyes_. The thousand yard stare in her eyes made her look haunted and sickly. Something in those green eyes was most assuredly _not_ normal. If Soo Lin had to give a word for what it was, she would call it madness.

“What can you tell me about this woman?” 

 


	11. What We Don't Remember

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I probably shouldn't have to justify why I haven't written anything over the summer, but I feel like I need to...well, I'll just say depression sucks. I haven't been feeling like myself, and the things that I usually love or feel like I should like weren't as much fun or as satisfying as they should have been. But I'm getting through it.
> 
> In any case, once I decided on what I wanted to say in this chapter, the rest of the ideas started to flow like syrup- slow going, but definitely on the way. I've never been on a schedule to write, but I'm going to try it for a bit to see if I can squeeze more out.
> 
> Enjoy!

Things were plenty hectic in the hours that followed hiding Soo Lin.

The Black Lotus gang still hadn't crossed the border into England, but she was watching closely. Jack had programs tracking all the Black Lotus' known aliases in the British customs computers, and facial recognition software running on her feeds of the CCTV for all the trains, buses, airplanes, and boats that both entered and left Europe. Sherlock's homeless network had been bribed to keep eyes out. She didn't like to do it, but Jack even pulled rank and got a few of the junior members of her organization to report to her.

As far as she could tell, nothing was happening, which didn't sit well with her. The gang members who lived in London weren't acting at all suspicious. To the idle crooked man, it would look like nothing too unusual was happening. But someone was in the city, tagging walls and threatening bankers while being nigh invisible. The Black Lotus was gearing up for something _big_ , they had to be, so why the hell was no one moving?

Furthermore, it was during her nighttime routine of checking her security systems that she realized there was _literally_ no reason for her benefactors to have told her about the Black Lotus interference. If the Black Lotus had crossed into London, all of Jack's people in the area would have noticed. She would have been on high alert anyway. If she had been threatened, she would have defended herself regardless of affiliation- that's what she was trained to do. They had told her to make her pay attention to it, as a means of distraction. And damn them, she had fallen for it. But she couldn't stop- something was about to happen. She resigned herself to days filled with watching the computer screen and hating herself for it, knowing she was playing right into their hands.

A few quiet days came and went. After thirty-six hours, Sherlock was climbing the walls. Without a case to occupy him, he focused his laser-like attention on Jack.

“What is this?”

It had to be at least the thirtieth time he'd said those words today. Jack sucked her teeth and looked up from her work. He was holding one of her empty tea mugs. Why, she couldn't understand.

She looked back down at the screen. “I worry that you're asking me to explain that to you.”

“I know what it is. Why are there eight of them? Why are they all over the table?”

There were various mugs, half-drunk and sticky from tea, decorating the table surface. When she would feel herself crashing, she would brew more and, not wanting to be slowed down by washing up, she simply pulled out another mug. They all had individual levels of obscenely-sugared English Breakfast inside. “I've been working,” Jack answered.

Obsessing was a better word for it. She hadn't slept for thirty two hours. She loved quiet days- reveled in them even- but she didn't trust them. A steady stream of danger and violence made each instance of it blur together and lose its intensity. She knew that, after the relaxing few days she'd had, the next episode of actions was going to explode like a bomb. So rather than enjoying the time she had to relax, she proactively looked for what she could, when she wasn't in class or checking on Soo Lin.

Currently she was reading reports of what Mycroft was up to. It wasn't making much sense, but it involved him loading up on cadavers. Something called Bond Air. She'd keep a weather eye out for it.

“The table is a mess.”

“You've made worse messes on tables.”

“Do you have plans to clean this table anytime soon?”

“Do you need the table anytime soon?”

“You need to clean it. Now.”

“I am working.”

“On what?” Sherlock walked around the table and took a look at her screen. “You- _playing sudoku_ is not work. You're barely even exercising a modicum of brain power.”

Of course he wouldn't think so, and she tried not be offended, but _dammit_. Jack stopped typing. “If I commit a murder for you, will you leave?” she snapped.

Sherlock looked at her adoringly. “Oh, _would_ you?”

“No.” John walked through the living room. “No murders, the both of you.”

Sherlock made a disapproving snort and stood up. “Fine. If you are determined to be so ridiculously dull, I'm going out. Perhaps Molly has something new for me to play with.”

“Those are someone's loved ones,” Jack called out to him as he flew down the stairs. “Try to remember that.” The door slammed shut.

John put the kettle on. “Any plans for the day?”

“Just this, for the moment.” She was intent on her work. She put a three in the upper right hand corner- Mycroft had procured the dead grandfather of two young girls? _Why_?

He settled in the chair across form her. “No clinic today?” she asked.

“They gave me the day. I thought I'd work on the blog a bit.”

“Best of luck to you.” Jack had already seen how slow he typed. He was going to be there all day.

The two of them settled into an easy silence. Jack put the numbers in the correct boxes, slowly decoding the message and only growing more confused as she did so. So far there was no intel on Bond Air, because her benefactors hadn't deemed it important enough to investigate. Regardless, something about it was stirring Jack's interest. She decided to squeeze a few minders in Parliament's firewalls, just in case it turned into something.

“Making more tea, you want any?” She stood.

“Wait.” She turned back to him, caught off guard. He came and stood directly in front of her, looking into her eyes one at a time. Suddenly he put his hand on her forehead.

“Are you... _examining_ me?”

“You have eight cups of highly-caffeinated tea on the table and they're all completely drained. You never went to bed last night. Something is wrong.”

John was infinitely more perceptive than Jack gave him credit for. It was annoying. “You must not have spent much time around kids my age,” Jack scoffed. “I'm in _college_. This is par for the course in terms of sleeplessness.”

“Would you tell me if something was wrong?”

“No.” She pulled away. “You're my flatmate. You're not my doctor.”

“Can't I be both?”

“Why would you want to be? I have plenty of doctors. Trust me, you don't want to join their company.”

The sound of her computer interrupted her. She walked back around the table to find that a pop up had interrupted her game of Sudoku, trying to sell her Dyson vacuums. She decoded it quickly to find that Megan had sent her another message.

 _Not sure if this has anything to do with what you told me about,_ it read, _but a guy was just found dead in his apartment. He was holding a gun- the police will rule it as a suicide._

Then it was probably just a suicide. Jack had just begun to fill out the ad and say as much when a second ad popped up, this time for a sweepstakes to win a trip to Mexico.

_I only bring it up because the bullet wound is on the right side of his head, but I watched some past surveillance footage, and I'm pretty sure he was left-handed._

Jack thought about it for a beat before turning to John. “Has Sherlock texted you?”

John made a disapproving face at Jack's subject change, but he humored her and pulled his phone out of this pocket. “Hmm...yes, actually. Inspector Dimmock got in touch with him. Says there was a murder, but the police are calling it a suicide. Something about the man being left handed.”

-0-0-0-0-0-0

It was Van Coon. The Black Lotus had let Van Coon live a bit longer than Jack thought they might, but he was finally dead. His death meant that the Black Lotus was ready to move. And dammit, when they moved they moved _fast_.

All of the sudden six new Chinese artifacts showed up in three separate auction houses, always by anonymous donors. Private underground dealers came into obscene amounts of opium almost overnight. Jack heard a rumor about some “priceless” ruby earrings trading hands for over $45 million.

Jack checked the surveillance footage of Van Coon's flat; he wasn't even smart enough to realize he was being watched. If Van Coon had smuggled for the Black Lotus, there would have to be others in the city that he worked with.

Jack looked through his journals. The man had kept a detailed itinerary and had scheduled his trips out of the country months in advance. Every time he came back, he made a note of his travel expenses to report to the company for reimbursement. She linked to the bank's computers and checked those records; every single time he left the country, he came back and had coffee at the Lucky Cat diner. Idiot had actually submitted receipts from this place so he could be reimbursed twelve pounds.

Her next move was to the Lucky Cat diner. Shamelessly behind on the times, there was no computer for her to get into, so she went to the diner on foot. The old man who worked there was the kind grandfather type, and he had no problem giving Jack the box of receipts. She matched dates together and found that a few of the receipts matched each other exactly, from menu items purchased to total cost, and the transactions happened one right after the other. Way too close to be coincidence, she took those receipts and left.

After searching for the credit card that had been used to pay for the food, she determined that one of Van Coon's partners was a journalist named Brian Lukis. She found his address broke into his flat to snoop, only to find (after twenty minutes of rifling though his books) that Lukis was upstairs, afflicted with rigor mortis. The police had to be notified, but she sure as hell wasn't doing it. She went up on the roof, fired off a few shots, and the rattled neighbors took care of the rest.

Sherlock and John believed they were investigating a serial killer. They didn't understand the connection to Black Lotus, and there was no way they could, not yet. But it made Jack's work that much more difficult. She understood that Sherlock would eventually put it all together, and when he did, their paths would intersect. He would be able to move freely, but she would need to be careful and not be seen by either man. The easiest course of action would be to work faster than them, and figure it out before they did.

And by easiest course, she meant frustrating as hell.

It took three days of running around and being secretive, but while she was walking through Chinatown she had a brainwave. She knew that the marks weren't letters, but something about them was still distinctly Chinese. She took a left and rounded the corner into a shop that sold tiny souvenirs. The woman behind the counter smiled up at her when the bell rang. “Welcome!”

Jack ignored her and made a beeline for the tiny trinkets. There were a few little toys she could have chosen, but the beaded necklaces made of turquoise was what she landed on. The tag on the necklace was covered in tiny marks that closely resembled the tag on Van Coon's walls.

“How much?”

The woman took the necklace from her. “One hundred fifteen pound.”

Jack took the necklace back and studied the tag again. With a smile, she pulled out her debit card. “I'll take it.”

0-0-0-0

On nights when Sherlock actually slept (like tonight), everyone in the Baker Street household was fast asleep by eleven. At promptly 11:01, Jack pulled out the tag and made a note of what the original mark in Van Coon's office looked like. The solid line was a one, and the half-finished figure eight as a fifteen.

One, fifteen. Two numbers marked on a dead man's wall. Whatever the numbers meant, Van Coon had recognized them as a threat.

Understanding that the marks were numbers didn't make it more recognizable, but for some reason, Jack was bothered. She couldn't put he finger on why, but she felt like her brain was prompting the next move, the way a hand knows how to write letters. It was familiar in some way, but she couldn't pinpoint why.

Jack decided to percolate. Her mind would work on the problem during her sleep, and she might come up with something new to try. At around midnight, she finally dozed.

At about four, her eyes flew open and her heart lurched into her throat.

_Holy shit, holy **shit.**_

0-0-0-0-0

Megan stretched her neck from side to side. The last three hours had been completely devoted to soldering new voltage protectors to the motherboard of her hard drive. It was really annoying when it overloaded and the hard drive stopped working, so Megan proactively put new protectors into her drives before she used them. As a result, she hated buying new drives- it was difficult and it took forever.

Megan started by gently using tweezers to hold the piece of wire where it went and _slooooowly_ soldering the wire into place. A bit more, almost done...

_**BAM.** _

She jerked back, thanking all higher powers that she hadn't just fucked up three hours worth of work. Something huge slammed into the front door so hard Megan heard it from her room. And she lived in a mansion, so that was saying something.

She stood and went to the landing of the stairs. The housekeep and the cook were blocking someone from coming inside. They were giving it a valiant effort, but someone was getting in. Everyone was yelling.

“-is in Hong Kong, and we cannot just let you inside-”

“-outside unless you want me to call the police-

“-I can _destroy_ you-”

Megan got to the bottom of the stairs before she recognized her friend. “Stop!” she ordered.

The cook and the housekeeper fell back and let Jack through. “Miss, she just came in and-”

“It's alright, Maggie. This is Jack, one of my friends from school. Let her inside.”

Jack grabbed her arm. “I need to talk to you _right this fucking second_. Where can we talk in private?”

After reassuring her flustered help, Megan led Jack to the library off the second floor. Before she could get a single word out, Jack shoved a piece of paper in her face. It was full of unrecognizable symbols, and it was written so hastily Megan knew whoever had written it was in a serious state of panic.

“Do you recognize these symbols?”

“Jack, what-”

“Do you. Recognize. _These Symbols_?!”

Megan took the slip of paper and studied it carefully. Now that she was actually looking at the paper, she realized that some of the symbols had numbers written next to them- a one and a fifteen.

“No, okay? What the hell is going on?”

“These symbols translate into numbers. If you were trying to solve this, what would be your next step?”

Megan didn't give a damn, but Jack was so shaken, Megan gave it some thought. “Well... I'll bet the numbers translate to words.”

“How would you figure out the code?”

“...with a book, I guess?”

Jack took a deep breath and very gently put her hands on either side of Megan's face. “Why did you say that? Why would you use a book?”

“I-I don't know. Jack what the hell?”

“Listen to me. I had the exact same thought- I jumped to a book. Why did we do that? Why did we have the same thought?”

Why the hell was she so freaked out? “We trained together, Jack. We lived together for years. Why are you freaked out about the fact that we're on the same wavelength?”

“Because this is more than just us being in sync-” Jack's hands went from cupping Megan's face to cupping her own head- “-it's muscle memory. We know what to do next because we've done this before.”

“...and? We were trained to look at pop up ads and see hidden messages- I'm not at all surprised to know we've learned to make a cipher like this.”

“When?'

“Oh, I don't know.”

“Ex _actly_. Don't you see the problem?”

Megan just stared at Jack. Jack took a deep calming breath to try and regain control of her emotions, because she was about to explode. “When was the last time you forgot anything? You talk about our training- we were also trained to commit _everything_ to memory. We walk into a room and pick it apart, and we can tell you the exact location of every item we touched. We have damn near perfect recall; it was bred into us. We do not forget things, _ever_. _We do not work that way_. So when did we learn about this cipher? When did we use it? _Do you remember_?”

Megan thought. And thought. And paled.

“Shit,” she whispered. “I- I don't- _oh my god_. I don't remember. Why don't I remember?”

Jack whispered too. “ _Exactly_.”

 


	12. Father of the Year

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...heeey guys...
> 
> So here's what's happened. I hit a major patch in my life where I was determined to get all A's in class (it almost worked- 3 A's and 2 B's suckaaaa) and I decided to take a study abroad trip (7 days and counting to my flight to London!). Because of all the things I had to do to achieve both of those goals, I didn't get to write anything at all for the past few months. I know this hasn't been updated since practically the summertime, but I had no time to get anything done.
> 
> Also (God this Author's Note is just one giant excuse note isn't it) I kinda...lost...my outline... The one time I write it on a piece of paper I lose the damn thing. So basically I had to re-make-up what happened in the story.
> 
> I think I got it!

 

“How is Jack?”

It was Lestrade, who was suddenly right behind him. Sherlock heard his question and let the words spill out his ears without answering. He was too busy studying the fingernails of the dead man in front of him. A businessman, looking to buy up the leftover mom-and-pop shops on the block to make some sort of high rise. It was of no importance, it was what businessmen did, so why would that incense someone to kill him?

“Sherlock.”

“What?”

“How is Jack? Is she adjusting well?”

“Why are you asking me? Ask her.”

“Is that just you saying you don't know?”

“I don't make a point to waste my time with useless trivialities. In any case, she hasn't complained, so I'm led to believe that she is fine.”

“How could you not _know_?”

“The victim has been here three days, maybe a bit longer,” Sherlock ground out. “You're going to want to interview the woman from the laundry- she's the killer.” He stood and smacked at his coat in annoyance. Lestrade sending out orders, and Sherlock decided he was bored. He felt like eating. Thai food would be nice.

The place that had the best rice was a fair bit away from the flat, which was good, because Sherlock needed the space right now. As he was taking his taxi he flipped his phone open and sent out a text to his network. According to them, Jack was still inside the flat, same as she had been for the past eight days.

To be honest? Sherlock had no idea how she was doing, but he did know something was wrong. Or at the very least different. Whatever it was had happened over a week ago, when Jack had left the flat in a flash at almost two in the morning and didn't come home until the next night. She'd looked haunted. Sherlock wasn't sure what to make of it. It interested him, but it didn't concern him. She was stubborn; she would never allow herself to need his help.

No, what concerned him was the fact that it had been almost three months and he still had no clue where to begin with this commune she'd grown up on. A facility in the business of producing children, very specific children that were never delivered to those who ordered them- what _was_ that? Why would anyone bother?

Mycroft had texted days ago, letting him know about the message Jack had received in the library. Less than savory characters were skulking about the dregs of London, and Jack was apparently affiliated with them. There was no obvious link as to how.

The information didn't phase him. The instruction did. _You have full permission to defend_. Defend?

He watched her. He watched the way she walked, the way she held her body when she stood still. He saw her strength. He watched as she dropped things and caught them in a flash before they could fall, almost blurring with the speed of her reflexes. There was karate in there, maybe a smattering of yoga or ballet. The evidence was there, once he looked.

But there was something more, lurking in the diction. Defend. By all accounts, to defend means to prepare yourself for attack if you need to. But something about the way they said it made it seem preemptive; it implied that Jack had the ability to head off the danger. She could seek it out and neutralize it before it became a problem. That meant that she would need to have skills bigger than just karate.

Which begged the question: what else could she do?

0-0-0

Sherlock went back to the flat, Thai food in hand. He walked up the stairs and through the kitchen to eat in his room. He had only just opened the plastic pouch of utensils when there came a knock at his door. “Sherlock?”

“Come in.”

John did. He shut the door behind him and leaned against the wall, crossing his arms and sighing. Sherlock recognized this stance. He'd taken the same stance when he'd talked to Sherlock about rehab. Clearly a lecture was coming on.

“We need to talk about Jack.”

Why was everyone so obsessed with Jack today? She wasn't that remarkable. She was a teenager. There were scores of them everywhere. “What about her?”

“Something is wrong with her, surely it hasn't escaped your notice.”

“Of course I've noticed. You're overreacting, I see no reason for concern.” Sherlock threw himself on his bed and began to eat his food.

“If you see no reason for concern, you haven't been paying attention,” John countered. “I don't know what it is that she keeps doing on her computer, but she hasn't been to class all week. She hasn't eaten or slept in days. I watched her pour herself a cup of English Breakfast this morning; she completely missed the mug and scalded herself with hot water. She didn't even notice until I stopped her.”

Sherlock tried to picture Jack, standing in front of the kitchen window, completely vapid and pouring hot water over her hand. It was surprisingly easy to visualize.

“What are you asking me to do about it, John?” Sherlock demanded.

John threw his hands in the air. “I don't know, Sherlock, talk to her! You're her father!”

“In case you haven't noticed, Jacqueline has made her unwillingness to accept me as her father quite clear.”

“Yes, she has. But you kept her here. You refused to give her emancipation. You bought her a bed, you put her upstairs, and you sent her to school. She may not want you as a father, but clearly you want her as a daughter. Take some responsibility for that.”

Sherlock stood up. He was tired of this argument. “I can't expect you to understand why I have chosen to keep Jacqueline here. You would have to gain at least fifty IQ points to have that conversation with me.”

“So that's it then? You're not going to do anything?”

“John, she is stubborn to a fault. Do you honestly believe she'd ever let herself need my help?”

“Jack gets that from you. Which means that she will keep going and tell everyone she's fine right up until the moment she keels over. Are you willing to wait that long?”

“I have no intention of coddling her. As she is so fond of reminding us, she is not a child. She is more than capable of taking care of herself. She doesn't need me.”

John leveled him with a look. “If you believe that, then why did you keep her here?”

John left. Sherlock stared at the door. He wasn't hungry anymore. The answer bubbled to the surface of his brain. _Because she's_ mine.

0-0-0

Neither man said anything to the other for the rest of the afternoon. They didn't encounter each other until Sherlock came out to find a pen and John was sitting in the living room.

Jack was at the kitchen table. It was her fifth day into no sleep, and the tea was winking at her. She didn't realize she was staring back until Sherlock cleared his throat. She looked up at him abruptly.

“I asked you to hand me that pen.”

She blinked, feeling like her eyes were full of dryer lint. God, she felt hungover. It was no fun to feel hungover is she hadn't gotten to be drunk first. “Here.”

She handed him the fork sitting next to the pen. He just looked at her. She groaned and left the table.

John clicked his tongue. “Still think she's fine?”

“What am I meant to do about that, then?” Sherlock snapped. “If I tell her to eat, she won't listen. If I tell her to go to sleep, she'll stay awake to spite me.”

“Being a father isn't simply telling a child to do things and then waiting for them to get done, Sherlock. You need to have some follow through.”

“How?”

“That's one for you to figure out,” John told him, opening his newspaper. “How you parent a child like that is a mystery. You like those.”

0-0

Jack eased herself onto the floor and and put her head on her arms. She felt sick. Obviously she was losing her mind; she needed a nap. She wished she could nap. But the dreams were making it difficult to relax.

It was as though she'd unlocked the padlock on the vault; ever since she'd told Megan about what she'd learned, Jack was remembering. Slowly but surely, visions from her past were floating through the shadows to the surface.

The problem was that she couldn't trust them.

There was a memory she had, one where she was deliriously happy, laying in a grassy field in a white dress letting the wind dance across her skin. Someone was tracing swirls on the palm of her hand. She was fairly certain she'd never worn a dress since coming to live here.

In another dream she was running like hell through a snow storm with one of her comrades bleeding on her back. This vision was probably truer than the rest, but she didn't remember anything about the particulars.

It was all so wrong. The only people with the means and the motive to take away her memories like this were those who worked for the Company. She shouldn't have been so surprised. These people had taught her to lie in every circumstance- why would those same people ever tell her the truth? Did they even remember how?

She'd lived in a compact unit with three other girls her entire life up to this point, one of whom had grown up to be Megan. They'd eaten breakfast together, and trained together. They'd never spent enough time together to consider themselves friends, but they were something. Megan and Jack were the only two to have graduated; the other two girls still remained with the Company. There was no way to tell if the other two had been tampered with in this same way.

Jack had texted her comrades about it using the vaguest possible language- _did we ever go on a mission here? Were these pieces of clothing involved?_ No one could confirm or deny her hallucinations, so for the time being they remained just that. It wasn't a pleasant state to be in. Some of her dreams were quite disturbing, even for her, and the thought that they could be true kept her pacing the floors at night.

She couldn't go on like this. She wasn't meant to operate on such little sleep. Things were staring to fall through the cracks- Sherlock and the pen were just the tip of the iceberg.

She couldn't find Soo Lin.

Jack had put her up in a little apartment building two block away from Baker Street, knowing the higher concentration of CCTV cameras would make it easier to keep an eye on the woman. For almost two weeks Jack visited Soo Lin, keeping her busy with pictures of Black Lotus members that needed to be identified. Already Soo Lin had identified half the heavy hitters and told Jack their methods. She knew to look out for a woman named Shan, their general, and Zhi Zhu, the spider. More than likely this Zhi Zhu was the one committing the murders, considering he could climb frankly insane distances unassisted.

Jack had gone back yesterday to give Soo Lin more food and water and had been greeted by an empty apartment. She'd torn it apart and pulled out what clues she could find, but they had proved to be insubstantial. Jack, a girl raised with the ability to track men halfway around the globe, couldn't find one woman in one little city. If her superiors found out about this, she knew, she'd be in deep shit.

There was no helping it. She needed to sleep. Obviously there was something she was missing, something she wouldn't be able to figure out until she slept. But she couldn't dream, or her sleep was not going to be very restful.

She compromised by sneaking out to the nearest drugstore and buying a pack of Ambien. She took two when she was at the door of 221B, and by the time she went upstairs to her bed she couldn't control her eyelids anymore.

0-0-0

She slept for fourteen hours straight. The second she woke up, she felt like a fucking idiot.

0-0-0

Soo Lin snuck through the shadows of the museum, practically crawling on the floor to get back to her station. She followed the trail of paint she'd left earlier that week so she wouldn't have to turn the lights on. No one could know that she was here, and she knew she couldn't be too careful.

She knew it suicide to be here. She also knew that whoever found her first was going to kill her, whether it was Zhi Zhu or that girl Jack. Soo Lin worried about both of them equally, but she knew she couldn't let herself be stopped by either of them.

She had to finish. She had to finish this work. It was the reason she'd been allowed to stay in this country, the whole reason she'd been given a job. Soo Lin was no fool. She knew how stupid it was for her to be risking her life for some clay pots, but considering that those pots had kept her alive for so long, it wasn't much of a risk.

The lights on all the work tables suddenly clicked on. Soo Lin paused on the floor, her vision growing hazy as all the lights suddenly came on.

“Really?” Soo Lin looked up at the voice.

It was Jack. Based on the look she was giving Soo Lin, she might've been safer had she been found by Zhi Zhu.

  
  


 

**PS- If you want to say hi,[I live on Tumblr.](http://ifyoucanreadmymindthenimsorry.tumblr.com/)**


	13. Stepping Up

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I swear to you here and now, I am going to FINISH THIS STORY IF IT KILLS ME.  
> Have a chapter!

Jack didn't speak on the way back to the safe house. Soo Lin wished she would say something. The suspense was unbearable, and it wasn't helping her already strung-out nerves. Jack's quiet was chilling. Silence never had the quality of peace, but of the powder-keg just seconds before it blew. Soo Lin didn't know enough of Jack to know how she would detonate.  
  
Soo Lin could tell something was wrong with her. The girl was becoming unhinged. The under eye circles were so purple and deep she worried they were bruises. She had a sort of skip in her walk, like her natural stride was being thrown off by a turned ankle. She didn't trip, but she certainly wasn't steady.  
  
They entered the safe house. Soo Lin was careful to remain out of Jack's reach, out of fear that Jack would strike her. But Jack didn't make a move to get her. She instead walked straight to Soo Lin's work table, where Jack had supplied Soo Lin with a few of her smaller pots from the museum, the ones that had been on her desk the night Jack had spirited her away.  
  
Jack picked up a small cup. It was part of a china set from the early Ming dynasty, notorious for its white porcelain tea sets with blue flowers and filagree adorning the edges of the pieces. Jack held it up and turned it from side to side, seeming to admire the painted dragons that flew around the surface of the porcelain. She held it up for Soo Lin to see, like the woman didn't have the minute details of every piece embedded on her eyelids. Soo Lin was instantly on edge.  
  
“You risked your life,” Jack murmured quietly. “For this. These. Tell me why.”  
  
Soo Lin blinked and tried to calm her racing heart. She scrambled for an answer, thrown off at the one remark she wasn't prepared for. As a result, she opened her mouth to speak and nothing came out but a whimper.  
  
There was a heartbeat's worth of silence, and then-  
  
Jack pitched her arm, and the delicate, devastatingly old piece of china slammed into the ground and multiplied into a million little pieces. Soo Lin's hand flew to her breast, the wind knocked out of her. Jack stared straight at her and reached for another, this one a plate, to hold up.  
  
“I asked you a question,” she murmured, slurry and dangerous.  
  
Soo Lin took a steadying breath. “I did not risk my life. They are my life.”  
  
Jack waited. Soo Lin continued. “I...I came to this country from China, alone and penniless. I spent my days searching for a place to live and spent the night fighting off the men who prowled the streets. I had nothing. I was nothing. I was basically waiting to die.”  
  
“And the pots saved you?” Jack asked scathingly.  
  
Soo Lin's eyes fluttered shut as she remembered. “I wandered into the museum. The pots, they were so beautiful. But they were crumbling. There was no one there who knew what to do. I saw this, and I told them I could help. They had no reason to believe me. I was a beggar who looked like I would be dead in the streets within a week. And if the director hadn't taken pity on me, I might have.”  
  
A tear snaked its way out of Soo Lin's eye and ran down her face, her mind's eye still filled with memories of the desperation and the dirt of being homeless. “They let me use the pots. They offered me a job...I made my life because of these pots.”  
  
She opened her eyes and stared at Jack with much more bravado than she felt. “I would be ungrateful of the life they gave me if I did not repay it.”  
  
She was surprised to see Jack look away, not out of disgust but out of consternation. Apparently something she had said had struck the girl, for she huffed and dropped her arm, looking down at the jagged confetti of porcelain.  
  
“I am trying,” Jack began slowly. “To save your life. There are people out there who have been sent to see you dead. I am trying my best to stop them from doing so. And with the ever growing list of adversaries I am having to battle, your life is becoming more trouble than it's worth.”  
  
Soo Lin swallowed. She was nervous, but she did not back down. Jack took a deep breath and let it out very slowly.  
  
“But I can respect the sentiment of repaying a debt. If it is worth risking your life, then so be it. I will respect you enough to allow you to make that choice. But understand this. I will not come after you again. I will not work to find you. If you are taking your life into your own hands, use your own hands and fight for it. I will not help you.”  
  
Soo Lin still didn't back down. Jack was impressed as she gently set the plate back on the work surface. The tension in Soo Lin's shoulders finally relaxed.  
  
Jack made to leave. “I'll be back in another week to bring you more food. Make your choices.”  
  
Jack left, and received a text. She took another steadying breath when she read it. She decided not to go back and tell Soo Lin that Zhi Zhu had been identified on the Underground that morning.  
  
It was time for Soo Lin to decide.  
  
0-0-0-0-0  
  
When was the last time Sherlock Holmes stood on the bad side of a precipice, feeling completely out of his element and not having the faintest clue what to do?

He'd been about six. It was his own birthday party, and his mother had invited all the children of his class to their estate in a misguided attempt to throw him a proper party, because what child didn't like parties, she'd asked. He'd been standing at the foot of the stairs, hearing the voices of the children bubbling into his foyer and noticing with scientific detachment his sweating palms, his dry throat, his shaking legs and his inability to find his voice.

He hadn't liked any of those kids. Right then, he'd kind of hated them for showing up, and he'd hated his mother for bringing this into his house and making him deal with this on his birthday. He'd tried many times to push his leg out and carry himself into the dining room with his head held high, like the precious lord they all thought Sherlock thought he was. In the end, Mycroft had taken pity on him and brought a slice of cake and his present to the stairs, where the two brothers stayed until his mother finally declared the party a tragic failure and shepherded all the children home.

Sherlock stood outside Jacqueline's door now, listening to the girl putter around inside it and not having the faintest clue what to do. He had no reason to be trepidatious, he knew. She was his...this was his flat, dammit. He paid the rent, when he could afford to. He could open any doors he liked.  
He put his hand on the knob, reconsidered, pulled away again and cursed his fear. What was he afraid of? What was he even doing?

John was right; something was wrong with her. That was happening more and more, John being right, and Sherlock was equal parts proud and annoyed. It was hard to maintain his position as the superior and smarter flatmate when John was becoming more perceptive to his missteps.

Sherlock was going to do something about it, not because John had told him to, but because he knew he had to. She was his...he was her.... because it was becoming irritating to have John shoot him disapproving looks every time Jacqueline wandered out of her room toward the kettle.

0-0-0  
John must never know. No one could ever know.

Sherlock's fingertips played across the laptop, scrolling and deleting tab after tab as his eyes scanned through the web pages.

He went to the first decent website he saw and read through the tips that had been laid out by the authors, an unnamed consortium of so-called “experts” grouped into the name “Mayo Clinic”. He was incensed by the fact that there were no credentials, but the list of references was impressive. With a crack of his knuckles, he dove in.

“Give your teen some leeway when it comes to clothing and hairstyles,” the website told him. “It's natural for teens to rebel and express themselves in ways that differ from their parents.”

Okay, he could clearly see where he had messed up earlier in the month when he had tried to force Jacqueline to change her dress on her first day of class. Jacqueline was definitely rebellious, he had learned that from day one. It was entirely possible that she got that from him. The website advised him to allow for self-expression, but to maintain a high expectation of her. He was capable of that.

The website also advised him to encourage cyber safety. He figured that shouldn't be too hard. There were many types of illicit software he could get his hands on that would copy her laptop's information onto a separate hard drive. He'd done it before to one of Mycroft's laptops, to great effect. He made a mental note to look into that tomorrow.

Sherlock continued to read and make notes about his parenting, particularly which pieces of it he would change to get the outcome he wanted. He followed the citations and read the source materials for the articles, scoffing with derision at most of the information but taking down some of it.

One rather interesting article he stumbled upon advocated taking steps to diminish your teenager's caffeine consumption. With the prevalence of energy drinks, sodas, and teas, teenagers were getting too much excess caffeine into their systems and becoming immune to its effects, requiring even more caffeine to access the same levels of stimulation. The consequences ranged from constant migraines to caffeine poisoning.

Sherlock's eyes shifted to their electric kettle. John was going to kill him.  
0-0-0-0-0  
  


At about 9, Jack stumbled over the threshold of her room and steadied herself with the wall. This wasn't how she'd hoped to rectify the sleeping issue; she'd slept too much now, and her body wanted to collapse onto the ground and sleep for another twelve hours. She barely made it down the stairs fully upright.

Fuck fuck _fuck_. Keep it together, she hissed at herself. Eight more steps, eight more steps until the kitchen, and then tea. Maybe a caffeine pill too.

With bleary eyes, she slowly made her way into the kitchen and put her hand out to find-

-the countertop, a layer of dust on the fine wood surface interrupted by the clean imprint of where the kettle had been. Jack blinked a couple of times, just to make sure it wasn't another hallucination.

“Where-”

“You don't need any more tea,” Sherlock told her from the couch. He was typing a million words a second on his laptop.

“You-” she wobbled and shook her head. “Where?”

“The fact that you cannot complete your sentence is indicative of my point. You have had too much caffeine. If you require more energy, you need to return to your room and sleep, end of story.”  
  
Jack blinked again and stared at the counter. “Seriously. What did you do?”  
  
“Go back to bed.”  
  
Jack wobbled in place, staring at the counter like the information didn't compute. She stood staring in silence for so long that Sherlock glanced over at her.  
  
“It wasn't even yours,” she finally muttered.  
  
John came down the stairs with a yawn and it quickly became apparent that he was working on power-saving mode, as he didn't even say good morning to anyone before he walked toward the kettle's former home and put his hand in the dusty outline. Jack took a deep, controlling breath of exhausted air and tried to remember how far away the closest Prêt shop was from Baker Street. Two hours? Was it worth it?  
  
John tapped his hand up and down on the counter, feeling for the kettle while rubbing sleep out of his eyes. A moment went by before John finally came to grips with the fact that his kettle was not on the counter.  
  
“What happened here?” John asked dangerously.  
  
“Sherlock has lost his _fucking_ mind,” Jack hissed as she picked up her jacket from the chair and made for the stairs. There was bound to be a Starbucks somewhere, it was hard to walk ten feet without tripping into one.  
  
She didn't make it past the threshold of the door, though; her foot couldn't find the first stair and she stumbled against the wall. Dots swarmed her vision. Sherlock had her arm in his hand before she could touch the ground.  
  
“Bed. Now,” he commanded, pushing her up the stairs to her room. “Enough of the foolishness.”  
  
Normally Jack would have pushed against Sherlock, telling him how overbearing and irritating his behavior was in an impressive volley of languages, but today she couldn't muster the energy. She settled for a weak grunt of protest and let Sherlock guide her to her room and deposit her on the bed.  
  
The shift of awake/asleep happened all at once, so sudden and swift she didn't know it had been sleep until she startled awake, four hours later. Her brain was still dusty and the corners of her eyes were packed with sand, but her body had rejected further sleep, which told her it was officially time to work.  
  
Sherlock wasn't downstairs, but John was, and he was drinking tea. There was a saucepan full of boiling water on the stove. John was getting desperate, it seemed.  
  
“Sherlock is out. You look better,” he told her. “And before you try, I am under strict instructions not to let you have any tea or coffee today.”  
  
“I'd like to see you try,” she muttered, but didn't push it. “In any case, the policing won't be necessary. I'm going to school.”  
  
“It's one,” John said mildly.  
  
“I've only missed two classes, I might as well.” Jack got a water bottle from the fridge and loaded it into her bag. “Tell Sherlock for me when he gets back, yeah?”  
  
“I don't think you should go in, Jack. You're still not 100 percent.”  
  
“Near ten days is enough to miss, don't you think?” She asked without looking at him. “I have assignments to turn in.”  
  
John sighed. There was zero to be gained in arguing it out with her and he knew it. Still, the doctor in him couldn't help but say, “Be careful, at least. You might crash later.”  
  
A crash was definite. But Jack was betting on it.  
  
0-0-0  
  
A mass of bodies swarming around the grass, throwing balls or frisbees or curses back and forth. It was lunchtime, and the cover made for the perfect spot to meet with Megan and not be obvious about it. Jack found Megan and slowly sank to sit on the spinning ground. Megan was idling under a tree on the university lawn, legs drawn up Lotus style. She was writing in a book in her hand that she passed off to Jack without a word.  
  
“I'm spiraling,” Jack told her. “I give it another two days before I'm totally out.”  
  
“Obviously. You look like shit.”  
  
Jack had taken to emailing her other comrades and asking about missing memories. More than a few replied with the affirmative, which was troubling. They'd also tried to advise her to get some sleep and take a break from the obsessing, recognizing her downward spiral for what it was before she did.  
  
Apparently this was something that happened to almost all the graduates at some point; without the ruthless direction they'd become accustomed to, graduates had a tendency to hyper-focus and become completely obsessed with something. They wouldn't eat, they wouldn't sleep, and eventually their bodies would turn against them. It was part of the learning curve for this whole independence thing, they told her. Everyone got sick their first time out.  
  
Jack rubbed her eye and glanced over what Megan had handed her. “Was yours this bad?”  
  
“About equal, I'd reckon. Had a head cold that morphed into a real cold that turned over into full-on pneumonia. Dad was catatonic, but I suppose that was the point.” Megan stretched out her legs and shivered. It was late August in London and she was for some reason still wearing shorts.  
  
Jack read the list over quickly. It was a page filled with tic tac toe boards that, once decoded, showed twelve names and told Jack there was a circuit of thirty computers between them. “I don't recognize any of these.”  
  
“You wouldn't. I had to pry into to some not-so-nice places to even get this list. As it is, we're going to have to burn it when you're done.”  
  
Jack smirked and handed it back. “Light 'er up, then.”  
  
As the paper was reduced to ash, Megan set about explaining. “Six Swedes, two Germans, four Americans. Together they make up the world's foremost authority on research into altering brain chemistry.”  
  
Jack sighed and rubbed her eyes. “Let me take a guess. They're all neurologists, studying the same data and going after the same result in a myriad of different ways.”  
“Yep.”  
  
“The potential market for their final product would be limited to crooked governments and other such shady operations.”  
  
“Uh-huh.”  
  
“So research funding is basically nil. In walks the Company?”  
  
“More like here the Company uses a batter ram to break the door down.”  
  
Jack closed her eyes. “How many?”  
  
“Eight. Everyone except the four teams from America.”  
  
Jesus. Less than fifty people in the entire world with the skills to pull this off, and the Company had funded more than half of them.  
  
Soo Lin, her father, The Black Lotus, her spinning head- she couldn't take much more of this all at once. “We need CCTV access for the campus grounds,” she said wearily.  
  
Megan blinked. “Wait, why?”  
  
Jack stood and lolled her head from side to side to stretch her neck. It was the damnedest thing- in all the minute snatches of sleep she'd had over the past few weeks, somehow she'd managed to sleep on her neck funny. “Eight teams of doctors, and one of them has successfully altered our chemical state to lose specific memory. We are either test subjects or one of the first success stories they have.”  
  
Without looking, she gestured toward the north-facing camera on the left corner or the main building. “Bet you five quid someone's taking notes.”


	14. 14 - Sick of Answers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN: Well. What do I even have to say for myself.   
> After having the year I've had (graduating from college and trying to decide what the fuck I was doing next, deciding to get a full time job, getting one, battling depression and cynicism and that ever gnawing sense of should-I-bother-finishing-this-no-one's-reading-it) I am back babyyyyyy! And now that this chapter is out of the way, I feel like the story is going to pour out a HELL of a lot faster.

Movies have a way of making breaking and entering look more clandestine that it is. You don't need a grappling hook, or all black outfits, or any fancy gadgets, and if your plan _is_ that involved, it doesn't need to be. There's a trick to getting in somewhere you have no business being, and it hinges on acting like you do.

On a Wednesday night, a hand rapped on the door of Loudon, Roland-Kerr's Mass Communications building where one Mr. Brogan, the aging cleaning man with a dipping habit and a particularly aggressive ulcer, just happened to be walking past. He stopped short and peered to investigate through the grates that protected the glass.

Two young girls were standing on the pavement: one a brown skinned girl with long black hair and thick glasses, the other a mousy looking thing with a pixie cut dyed bright green and deep bruise-y circles under her eyes.

“Sorry for the intrusion,” the dark one said, her French accent gargling the r's in a way Mr. Brogan found charming. “But we're students here, and this one left her books in a classroom upstairs. I know it's late, but could we...?”

Brogan hesitated, full well knowing he could get hung for this is they messed about and got caught by security, but ultimately he took pity on the girls. The green-haired one looked like she might keel over. He stepped back and muttered at them to be quick. He made sure they rounded the corner before putting his earbud back in to continue his audio dramas.

Twenty minutes passed before he saw the girls again. The small one had a stack of books under one arm, and both ladies thanked him profusely for letting them in. He stood by the window of a third-floor classroom and watched them climb into a taxi.

  
  


A week would pass for Mr. Brogan, and he would last be seen getting into a taxi during the middle of his shift. He would be missed at work for two days, after which the manager of campus maintenance would receive his formal letter of resignation.

0-0-0-0-0-0-0

  
  


She could see the sun. Damn it, morning again.

It had only been two days since her last sleep this time, so, progress. She yawned wide enough to split her face in two, but she pressed it into her shoulder and buggered on typing. She had been working on this so long without pause that if she closed her eyes right now, the lines of code would rain vertically in her vision and she would discover the secrets of the Matrix.

So far all they had was a vicinity. The cameras in the school were all CCTV, but security was outsourced to a third-party company, so there was no remote access on the campus. There was only one computer with any sort of uplink to the camera feed, and when they had conned their way inside, they had installed a software (of Megan's own design) that allowed either girl to cut a patch into the feed and trace it up to a point. The program had been patched together on the spot that night, so it wasn't smart enough to get more exact than a general area. Not yet, at least; Megan was working on it.

The last address they had to work with was far west in Basildon, near Broadmayne. A fair city in its own right, but inevitably smaller than central London. It was just far enough away to be separate from the hustle of London, but close enough that a trip into the metropolis wouldn't be too far out of the question.

Jack chewed the skin on her lip and felt it give, just a bit. Basildon. A sighting visit would probably have to be their next move.

She felt in her bones that it was six, or nearing that. She rolled her neck and winced at the cracking protests she got for the effort before gently pushing the laptop off her legs and rolling over in the bed. Sleep wasn't coming, of that she was certain. But she was going to enjoy the quiet for as long as it would have her.

Sparrow made her tiny sleeping noises and shifted around on the desk, inside her carrier. Jack stared at her old friend and sighed.

She had been rather close to eight when one of the Professors had come to them with Sparrow, a tiny thing back then, close to dying. A bad experiment with gene therapy, they'd been told, before Sparrow had been placed in a small kennel and left for them to mess about with. It wasn't uncommon for this to happen; animal testing was constantly underway, and one of the counselors had maintained that animal contact would be good for them. Like therapy dogs, but with a new animal coming in every week or so after the old one had “gone away”.

By all rights Sparrow should have died within two days. None of the other children had been much interested in the prospect of her, and most of them lost interest rather quickly. Jack would have too, if she hadn't seen an attendant come to take her away and leave with a bite for his troubles. Sparrow was a stubborn creature, she remembered noticing. That little rabbit refused to go down without a fight.

Every day after that, Jack would crouch by her kennel and gently stroke her face, from her forehead to her nose, with one tiny finger. Sparrow never nipped at her the way she did with other kids. Even that young, they were both kindred spirits, stubborn to the last breath and vicious to anyone who tried to fuck with them.

Jack admired the ease of Sparrow's existence, but sometimes she hated the rabbit for it, too. Sparrow was just an animal, asked only to live and be alive. No one pushed her to her limits. No one tried to contort her into a new creature. No one picked and tore and sewed and molded until something new and terrifying looked back in the mirror.

_To live and be alive._ No more, no less. What a concept, for a girl like her.

When it became clear Sparrow wasn't going to die, she became something of a pet to all the children, the first of its kind. All the kids had enjoyed having Sparrow around, but Jack felt she was the only one who could properly look after the stubborn old girl. So when Jack left, so did Sparrow.

_Stolen_ was a strong word to describe her actions, but it was the only word that properly fit the bill. Jack was willing to live with that.

She lay there on the bed, watching her comrade-in-arms take her rest. Sparrow reminded Jack to be strong. Especially at times like these, when Jack felt anything but strong, she needed the reminder, that extra kick.

Her head kept a steady beat throughout the day, and there was a deep ache in the back of throat when she swallowed. She was sick; there was no use pretending she wasn't. She may have been able to head it off earlier, but she had dithered about for too long. All that was left to do was weather through it at this point and come out ready for a battle.

0-0-0-0-0

Part two of Sherlock's new parenting regime involved creating a schedule for Jack to adhere to. If he was honest, he wasn't quite looking forward to implementing it, nor was he relishing the idea of the arguments that would come with it, but he knew it was necessary. Jack woke when she pleased and stayed up half the night on her laptop. No doubt it was why she was so exhausted all the time; her body had no proper circadian rhythm to latch onto. It was time for that to change.

At eight o'clock in the morning, Sherlock knocked once before opening her bedroom door. Jack stirred but didn't sit up, or even turn over to look at him.

“Monday. You've got classes,” he said to her. “Get up.”

“Skipping,” she slurred.

“No. You missed ten days already, that's more than enough. You've made a commitment to the school to show up and study, and I expect you to do so.”

She didn't answer. He came over to her and threw the covers off of her in one motion. She tensed at the feeling of cold air on her skin but otherwise still didn't move.

“Up,” he said, grabbing at her forearm. “Now.”

Jack took a deep controlled breath. “Please let go of my arm,” she said.

It was the _please_ that threw him. Jack was belligerent, as a general rule. She didn't do asking nicely. His grip slackened, and she pulled her arm out of his hand.

She turned over slowly. When they were face to face, Sherlock paused for a beat before turning and bellowing out the door for John to come upstairs. In his room, John startled awake and rushed up the stairs with adrenaline in his throat.

If he didn't know better, John would assume Jack was wearing costume makeup. The bruises that had been underneath her eyes for the better part of a week were especially striking when her skin was this pale. She was covered in sweat, and she looked like she was going to vomit any second. John took all this in with clinical attention to detail, went downstairs, got his bag, and came back up.

Jack laid her head back on the pillow and shut her eyes. John came over, unzipping his bag and making tutting noises. “Well, now,” he said, not unkindly. “We saw this coming, didn't we?”

Jack's skin felt sharp and hypersensitive, and when John put his hand on her throat to feel at her lymph nodes she felt pinpricks like a cluster of tiny needles. She didn't have the energy to fight him.

“This is why we don't stay up for three days straight and drink a hundred gallons of sugar,” he continued.

He opened his kit and rummaged around for something to take her temperature with. He found the in-ear thermometer first, but she pulled away from him when he tried to use it.

“Come on,” he urged. “I need to take your temperature.”

“Not like that,” she whispered, trying to sit up. “Not my ears.”

“Why?”

She opened her mouth to answer, but then froze halfway to sitting up. Before either man knew what was happening, she had jumped out of the bed and flown with subsonic speed down the stairs. They followed in time to see the bathroom door slam shut.

She vomited for a good long moment, a moment that was full of tension and silence for the two men on the other side of the door. Sherlock was perfectly still, staring at the door, his lips ever so slightly pursed open. He twitched suddenly, and then he relaxed into what John could only call his Default Morning stance- cold, calculating, and mildly annoyed with the universe. He moved to the other side of the kitchen where he had abandoned his morning's pet project: a beaker of liquid, an array of eyelet droppers, and a row of dry litmus paper strips.

“Diagnosis?” he asked John, managing somehow to sound both demanding and bored.

John huffed and rolled his arms in a sort of helpless _how the hell should I know_ gesture. “I'm guessing she has a fever, but she wouldn't let me check. The vomiting isn't a great sign, but it could literally be anything. Food poisoning?”

“Would need to have had more food for that,” Jack mumbled from behind them, stumbling out of the bathroom and collapsing on the couch, back facing the two men. “It's some sort of virus, I'm sure. I've felt it coming on for days.”

Sherlock stared at her long and hard with an expression that John couldn't place, and then looked over to John. The doctor shrugged. “It wouldn't surprise me.”

Jack stretched out on the couch and let out a breath of air that seemed to deflate her. “Don't worry,” she said. “I'm not fine, not by a long shot, but I can handle myself.”

John worried about her in the sense that he, as a doctor, had taken an oath to worry about the sick. He didn't worry about her personally. This was a girl who could drop him like a stone and shoot a gun with precision greater than anything John had been taught to do in the military, and he was a crack shot. She wouldn't put herself at risk when her defenses were down. She would take care of herself.

“There's medications you could take,” he advised, “but you'd be better served just waiting it out. If it's a virus, you'll have the worst of it now and improve within three days or so.”

“Mmmh,” Jack said into the pillows.

John checked his watched. “I've got to get going. Call me if anything gets worse, yeah?”

Jack just hummed again and pushed herself more into the corner of the couch. John patted her on the shoulder and nodded at Sherlock as he made his way out the door and back down the stairs of the building.

Sherlock watched Jack, waiting for her to stir or groan in pain, but she didn't move. He could tell by the way she was breathing that she was still awake, but she kept her back to him and made no effort to relocate back to her bed. Probably trying to keep herself close to the bathroom, just in case.

Well. She had said not to worry, so he wouldn't. He sniffed and refocused himself on his work.

Hours passed like this, just the two of them and the noise that filtered in through the window Sherlock opened to create a cross-breeze. Sherlock dripped drops of his solution onto litmus paper and noted the changing colors on a notepad. He created more solutions and repeated his processes. He contemplated the practical applications of this research, as he presently didn't have one. He worked and occupied himself and did his very best to ignore Jack who, over the course of the time they sat there, didn't sleep, but also didn't move.

Sherlock usually had a general disdain for the people of the universe and the noise they seemed to think mandatory for human life. Any number of people in Sherlock's life would have been hard-pressed to match this level of silence for this long. By all accounts Sherlock should have been pleased that his daughter was capable of such quiet.

It made his skin crawl. Jack was never this quiet. She was loud, and stubborn, and demanding and dirty and overall hellacious. This complete 360 of her natural personality only served to show him how not okay she was. He worked as best he could with his nerves strung out, ears straining to hear some kind of movement from his daughter. She shifted now and then, stretching her legs minutely into better positions, but otherwise she didn't even stir. He didn't like it.

Sherlock slowly sat up from where he was hunched over the table with a beaker in hand. Something had shifted; the air, the tension, the universe, whatever. That, and the strange three-legged footsteps coming up the stairs made Sherlock sneer.

“I am busy,” he snapped, leaning back over the table.

“Indeed,” Mycroft said, waltzing into the room with his trademark umbrella. “But you do not need to be defensive. I am not here to create a disturbance, brother mine. Haven't the time.”

“Then what do you want?”

Mycroft didn't answer right away. “I have been monitoring the situation. I wanted to know if I could be of some assistance.”

Sherlock turned to see Mycroft standing in front of the couch, staring unabashedly as his niece. Slowly, she began to stir and twitch, and both men watched as she took a deep controlled breath and turned herself over to face them.

“Mycroft,” she said. Her voice was raspy, a smoker's voice, and decidedly worse than it had been in the morning.

“Jacqueline. You have seen undoubtably better days.”

She coughed in lieu of a chuckle. “Well. We all have bad days. Have you come to check up on me?”

“Quite,” he said. He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a glass prescription bottle filled with small grey capsules. “I do believe these could provide some relief.”

Jack looked at the bottle with one eyebrow raised at him. “And these are, I'm guessing, a fever reducer of some kind? Because John has advised me to let the fever run its course.”

Mycroft gave a pointed grin. “The British Government has worked with medications the good doctor has likely never seen. I assure you, these will work in ways most modern medicine cannot.”

Jack looked between him and the medication once before reaching out a hand and allowing Mycroft to lay the bottle in her palm. “What's in it?”

“A curious cocktail of acetaminophen, ibuprofen, a bit of metamizole, and a few other compounds that have been shown to rapidly improve recovery time in instances like yours.”

Jack turned the bottle in her fingertips, looking over the pills but finding no reason not to try one. “Alright, then. Thank you, Uncle Mycroft.”

Mycroft pivoted on the heel of his Santoni Oxfords and ambled away. “Yes, well. You'll want to take them with food. No more than two a day. Now if you'll both excuse me, I'm due for a meeting.”

He walked out onto the landing of the stairs, but not before he gave his brother a look. It was an old look, one Sherlock hadn't seen for a number of months. It conveyed so much smug satisfaction that the two brothers could send each other this look and practically have a whole conversation.

_I helped,_ the look said. _You didn't._

Sherlock bared his teeth in a silent growl. _Get off my stairs._

Mycroft smirked and thunked his way down the stairs. The flat returned to silence once more.

Sherlock turned back to his notepad but couldn't help glancing over at Jack. She had placed the bottle onto the side table next to the couch and turned away from him once more.

“What are you doing?” he demanded.

She turned her head to say clearly, “Trying not to vomit, if you don't mind.”

“Take the pills. That's what you're meant to do with them.”

She groaned and turned away from him again. “Later. He said to take it with food and, frankly, I don't feel like eating.”

“That's idiotic,” Sherlock snapped. “If the pills will make you feel better, suffer through the food and take one now.”

“Sherlock,” she said testily. “I've got this situation under control, okay? I can take care of myself. You just focus on your work.”

Sherlock took a deep breath and turned toward the fridge. He opened it and, pushing past the molded cheeses, out-of-date milk and bags of appendages ( _Christ_ , someone needed to clean this), he managed to find an apple that had no soft spots and would still qualify as food.

He put it on the table before Jack with a thud. She sat up a bit, looking over her shoulder, then smirked and laid herself back down.

“Eat,” he demanded, his voice clipped and annoyed but his mind in turmoil. It was clear she was worse than she had been this morning; her voice was huskier, and the sluggish way she was moving indicated a higher fever. If she didn't take this medicine, how much worse would she be by dinnertime? Should he call John now?

She didn't turn to look at him again. “Go. Away.”

Sherlock grit his teeth together and took the apple up in his hand again. Jack twitched as she suddenly felt the apple's cold peel press into her skin.

Sherlock was actually holding the apple against her face. “ _Eat_ ,” he repeated.

In one brisk flash of energy, she took the apple from him, bit off a huge chunk, chewed three times, then spit it out violently onto the front of his dressing gown. What little apple stuck to his shirt had been mashed halfway to applesauce, and long crimson strings of peel fell from the hem onto his slippers. Sherlock looked at her, aghast, almost unwilling to believe she had just done that. Jack glared at him.

“Sod off,” she suggested, tossing the apple away and huddling herself into the couch once more.

Strangely enough, Sherlock was relieved.

0-0-0-0-0-0-0

Mycroft was not the only visitor who came up to see Jack that afternoon. An hour or so before Sherlock expected John to return home, Mrs. Hudson escorted a squat, curvy girl with short fuzzy hair and dark brown skin into the apartment. The girl's eyes were a light brown, almost golden, and her eyes swept the room when she walked inside in a way that reminded Sherlock of Jack. The two girls seemed to be about the same age.

“This girl says she's a friend of Jack's from university,” Mrs. Hudson supplied before going back downstairs.

“Megan,” the girl said to him with a nod and a charming smile. She didn't try to shake his hand, which he appreciated. “I've heard a lot about you, Mr. Holmes.”

She walked slowly to the couch where Jack was laying, having drifted into some sort of limbo state that wasn't quite sleep but wasn't quite not. When Megan was within reaching distance, Jack's eyes opened. The two girls regarded each other, Jack with relief, Megan with amusement.

“I thought you said they gave you a room here,” Megan quipped, picking up the bottle of pills off the coffee table and inspecting them.

“It's too far from the toilet,” Jack said. The quality of her voice made Megan raise an eyebrow and she hastily continued, “it sounds worse than it is.”

Megan's disbelieving look didn't go away. “I'm sure it does. But you need to lay in a bed, not on a couch.”

Sherlock looked up from the kitchen table where he was having tea and stealing John's Walkers' biscuits. He had been telling her for the better part of the afternoon that she needed to move back upstairs inter her own bed. She had been ignoring him steadily.

“I'm fine where I am,” Jack said, turning over onto her back to look at the other girl.

Megan narrowed her eyes at Jack. She'd seen this before. Jack kept twitching and shifting her little toes, a sure sign she was uncomfortable. Jack had a stubborn streak a mile long; she was just laying here out of spite like the ridiculous girl she was.

_God_ , Megan thought as she drew herself up. _I've missed her._ “Jack,” she said in that tone of voice that made people stand up and take notice. Jack looked up from the couch, eyes wide. “Let's go upstairs, shall we?”

Jack blinked. She groaned a bit and let her neck go limp, her head dropping into her chest, but after a moment of self pity she dragged herself up from the couch and stumbled toward the stairs. Sherlock stared at Megan, shocked.

Megan shrugged one shoulder as she followed Jack out of the room. “There's a right way to talk to everyone, Mr. Holmes.”

0-0-0

Jack staggered into the room and feel into the bed with a groan. Megan came in after her and shut the door before turning to her friend, hands on hips.

“Don't be mean to me,” Jack said to her. “I'm sick.”

“I know,” Megan said. “It's strange to see you like this. You don't quite know how to handle yourself, do you? What have you taken?”

“Nothing. John has advised me against any medication, says the illness will run its course more smoothly if I let the fever break naturally. I'm inclined to believe him, especially since taking medications involves getting up and moving around and that jaunt up the stairs has really killed me.”

Megan made a sound, a low murmur of either agreement or acquiescence. “Shame,” she said. She looked again at the pill bottle that was still in her hands. She drew one out, looking at the tiny crystals in the gelatin capsule through the light. She put it on the end of her tongue and let it dissolve, tasting the contents before spitting it into Jacks' waste bin by her desk. “This would do it, too. This is powerful stuff, I can tell.”

“You can have it then,” Jack told her drearily.

“Hold onto them for another time. They may be useful.” Megan tucked the bottle into the drawer on Jack's desk. “Now for the task at hand: who is Soo Lin Yao, and why did you tell her to text me?”

Jack propped her head up against the pillow and closed her eyes. Through her exhaustion, she briefly explained who the woman was and why Jack had chosen to get involved. At the beginning of it Megan was amused; by the end she was not.

“But why bother telling you about it?” Megan mused, mostly to herself. “Even without the order, if you crossed them, you would defend yourself. The only reason...”

Jack let her get there on her own. When she did, Megan studied her friend from where she lay on the bed. _Poor Jack_ , she thought. Someone was trying to trap her; to what end, Megan didn't even want to begin to guess.

“Did you know you were going to get sick?” Megan accused.

“Of course I did. I was counting on it, in fact,” Jack said. “Everyone was so fond of telling me I was getting weak. I figured, then, that I could use it to my advantage in the situation. I texted Soo Lin and told her I was going to be out of commission for a while, told her to call you if she needed anything, and left it in her hands.”

“You left it in the hands of a known flight risk?”

Jack made an effort to sit up. “I need to keep her alive, but not at my detriment. I've already told her that I won't follow after her to keep her safe; if she wants to leave, she does it with the understanding that no one is coming to save her. She tells me where she's going so I know where to find her corpse if she doesn't come back.”

Megan put a finger on Jack's sweaty forehead and pushed her back onto her pillow with worryingly little effort. “She texted me last night and told me she had important things to kip on with at the museum tonight.”

“Then I hope she is prepared to watch her back,” Jack murmured. “But that's not why you're really here. What did you find in Basildon?”

Megan made an innocent face that Jack didn't buy for a goddamn second. “You're an impatient bastard by nature,” Jack told her. “Don't be coy. I know you went without me.”

Megan took a single coil of her hair in her fingers and twisted it. It was a very casual gesture, almost like a scratch. Jack had seen many people make the gesture before, winding a hand into their hair in frustration or agitation. When Megan did it, it usually meant everything was about to hit the fan.

Jack sighed and put one arm behind her head to look up at Megan. “Gimmie.”

Megan handed her a phone. The photo on the screen showed a building that had been condemned by the city for at least four months, maybe more. Graffiti scrabbled up the wall and the windows were busted in; grass was slowly overtaking the small parking lot to the building's left. The yellow tape of a crime scene could go up and it would surprise exactly no one.

“Cozy,” Jack quipped.

The next photo was an interior shot. Inside the building was a row of black leatherette chairs along the wall underneath the windows, across from which was a reception desk and a potted plant in the corner- fake, for there was no reason it should still be green. Modern art hung on the walls and a chic misshapen coffee table was laden with magazines of all kinds spread out in a fan pattern. Disregarding the broken glass from the windows that was scattered all over the floor, the room was still clean and serviceable.

The next photo showed the hallway, carpeted with the industrial carpeting one would find in a dormitory, that navy-blue woven plastic carpet. Divots in the walls indicated doorways, and Jack scrolled to find a photo of one door open to reveal-

A bedroom. A twin extra long mattress atop a steel bed frame ran just below the only window; the sheets were white, the blanket on top a wooly navy blue. A pine desk abutted the wall closest to the door. The closet was separated from the rest of the room by a long pocket door that would seamlessly disappear into the wall when it was opened.

This was a Company bedroom.

Jack was sitting straight up now, fatigue be damned. “How many?” she asked.

Megan watched Jack's reaction, her eyes cool. “Six. Three on either side.”

“All empty?”

“Yes.” Megan took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “They haven't been used in years, judging by the inch of dust, but those could have been our bedrooms, Jack. It doesn't make any fucking sense.”

“Is this all that was in the building?” Jack asked, her voice still even and her hand still steady even though she felt like she was going stringy at the joints.

“That's all I saw,” Megan said. “Granted I didn't get a good look at the place; one tends to be a bit jumpy when they find another set of Company rooms 3,000 miles away from where they should be.”

Jack enlarged the photo and tried to study the corners of the room, take in the dust and faint trail of human weight, but the clarity of the photo disappeared after zooming in twice. She huffed in irritation.

“I need to see it,” she declared.

Megan nodded, slowly. “Later, when you're feeling better.”

Jack glared. “Do we have that kind of time?”

“Perhaps not. But this-” Here Megan broke off and ran a hand over her face. “You're my second in command, so I'll give it to you straight; this scares the shit out of me. Not many things do. If we're doing this, as in properly doing this, I need you at a hundred percent. Otherwise we put ourselves in a dangerous situation with you at half mast.”

“There's no time-”

“Then we're going to have to _make_ time, dammit,” Megan snapped, suddenly annoyed. “You and I are the only ones following this lead right now; if anything happens to you, I'll be screwed, and vice fucking versa. You don't like waiting? Tough. If you want answers you will learn to be patient.”

Jack scowled at her. “Don't be cross with me, I'm ill,” she said petulantly.

“Drink some orange juice and settle in,” Megan said flatly. “We don't make a move until you're back in form. And if I find out you left this flat with a fever higher than 38, I'm drop kicking your arse.”

0-0-0

  
  


Megan left soon after. Sherlock peeked upstairs and was shocked to find Jack in bed, slack with sleep. What exactly, he wondered, had been said between the two girls when they were alone?

He thought about what he knew while he entered his data onto a spreadsheet. The way her friend Megan carried herself spoke of confidence and self-assuredness, not to mention a certain amount of athleticism. The ease with which she'd managed to get Jack into bed indicated a bond between them that was deep; either they were the sort that could become instant friends with someone in little time, or there had been a long span of time between them for the friendship to develop.

Sherlock pressed his lips into a fine line. If the two of them had known each other for a long time, Megan undoubtedly knew more about where Jack had come from. Maybe she came from the same place. Maybe he could follow her trail for more clues about the commune that had supposedly raised Jack from her birth, but was nigh impossible to find.

And he had tried. In every moment between the holes in this cipher case that wasn't already devoted to sleeping or the occasional eating, he had searched through databases and search engines and files upon files upon files. He had gotten into contact with his informants around the city and a few long distance, having them put feelers out. Most reported back with no new information, if they bothered to report back at all. He was utterly and completely stuck, and for Sherlock this was new.

Or hell, maybe he'd found the answer already. The entire situation was so beyond the scope of what he understood that maybe he had seen it on his screen, had simply continued to scroll by, and the answers to the questions he had were just dancing in the aether.

What irritated him most of all was having to stop his investigation of Jack's background to look into the cipher case. It was so rare that he got anything that truly interested him, and now he had two delicious puzzles to bounce between. It should have been ideal for him in theory, but in practice it just frustrated him. One would think that when he had exhausted all possibilities in one case, he could flip over to the other and made more progress: what he actually did was just flip-flop back and forth between each case, hitting dead ends all over.

His phone buzzed. Email alert: a man named Andy Galbraith from the National Antiquities Museum had emailed him, asking if he could please help him to find his co-worker, one Soo Lin Yao, who hadn't been seen in over three weeks. A week ago Sherlock wouldn't have bothered- as much disdain as he held for Scotland Yard, they were capable of handling a missing persons case on their own- but something clicked when he read that Yao worked in the Chinese antiquities section. Normally it wouldn't have been anything to go on, but here was a third person affiliated with China who had fallen into misfortune. A coincidence of this scale was hardly something to be ignored, even if it was simply coincidence.

He sent a text to John, telling him to meet at the National Antiquities Museum after his shift. John texted back a question mark and got no reply. Sherlock had his coat on and was starting down the stairs when he remembered Jack. Surely she could take care of herself for a handful of hours; if she was just going to continue to sleep, even better. Sherlock scribbled a note on the back of a Chinese takeaway receipt and left it on the kitchen table before slamming out the front door and hailing the first taxi that crossed his path.

0-0-0-0

She felt better, when she woke up hours later, but not by much. She could stand without the high-pitched whine in her ears, though, so, progress.No one was in the living room or the kitchen; she didn't dare check their rooms. There was a note on the kitchen counter with three words scrawled across it: _Out. Back later. SH._

Evidently Sherlock had been handed a case; judging by the time, John had most likely been drawn in as well. It suited her fine. The relative quiet one story up from the busy street was welcomed. It gave her a touch more space to think.

She wished she could heal herself through willpower, shrink down her consciousness and subsume into her individual cells and demand they get their shit together. She no longer had time to be sick, fuck what Megan said.

Basildon, what the _fuck_ was going on in Basildon? Every second she didn't know she felt a smattering of gooseflesh go up along the back of her neck. She was the daughter of a man who couldn't look at a person without trying to pick them apart; the desire to know everything was in her blood.

There was nothing she could do from here. Normally she would have tried to look into the computers of the place, find (or make, if need be) a back door to look over the files they had, but as far as she could tell there wasn't any such terminal in the building. She'd pored over the photos, but there'd been no cameras in the corners and no computers in any of the rooms, so she couldn't-

There were no computers, she thought, coming to an abrupt halt on her way back to the couch.

_There were no computers._

Why, then, had Megan's tracing program been able to pull a digital signal from that location? What had been there, but now wasn't, that would leave such a trace.

Jack had her shoes in hand before she had any sort of plan in mind. There were options enough to complicate the situation; there could have been a subprogram on the computer they hadn't been trained to look for that sent a dummy location (but why Basildon?); there couldn't have been an old trace left from a single active phone line. The only option that couldn't be true was the one where Megan messed up.

Either there was a computer in the building that Megan had missed, which Jack doubted, or there _had_ been a computer there at the beginning of their investigation over a week ago, and now was gone. But either way, there was a computer, and she needed to see it.

But she didn't make it to Basildon. She didn't even make it down the stairs before her phone went off. A text from a false number – her own handiwork- telling her about the comings and goings of those she'd identified as people of interest. The picture on her phone loaded slowly, like it didn't want to be the one to tell her Zi Zhu had been spotted along the tube line, specifically the Waterloo Station, on what appeared to be a path to the National Antiquities museum.

He had been in London for some time, Jack thought as she summoned a cab with her hand. Almost three days he'd been there, but he hadn't moved yet. Why now? Why did everything have to happen _now_?

“National Museum of Antiquities, please,” she said, texting Soo Lin and telling her not to leave her hiding place tonight. She scrolled back to the picture of Zhi Zhu at the airport.

The man was obviously an idiot. He'd made no effort to hide his face; quite the contrary, the agile bastard was staring into the camera, his short buzzcut and unblinking eyes screaming “cult” louder than anything else could. Either he didn't know he was being watched or he didn't care; either way, idiot.

Soo Lin didn't text her back. Jack cursed and bit her thumbnail before texting Megan and telling her to go to the museum if she had time. Soo Lin couldn't come to harm. Not yet, not _yet_.

The cab didn't move. Jack glared blearily at the back of the cabbie's head. “Oi. National Museum of Antiquities.”

“No can do, ma'am,” the man said with a strong Irish brogue and a voice like a smoker. “I've been told not to take you past Great Portland Street Station.”

“By whom?” she asked incredulously. “Do you realize that I am to sub-vice-Tressor to Zone one? Who does that order come from?”

“Erm.” He rubbed his hand across his mouth. “The sub-Tressor, ma'am.”

Jack stared at him openmouthed for a heartbeat before jumping out of the cab and launching herself down the road.

She didn't know what Megan was trying to achieve by keeping her away from the museum, but damn her if she didn't think Jack would try to make it there on foot. Megan wouldn't understand, not now. She didn't know what Jack stood to lose if something happened to Soo Lin.

0-0-0-0-0

The night they met, Jack had showed her a photograph of a young woman and asked if Soo Lin recognized her. Jack asked this of everyone; she hadn't really expected an answer. It was an obsession of hers, the photo. She'd taken it from a file at the academy and, not knowing how else to begin her search, she began asking everyone she met who had any grey dealings if they recognized her.

Soo Lin had taken the photograph, blinked at it, and handed it back. “Who is this woman?”

“Dunno. I'm trying to find her, so I can find out. Do you know her?”

“I did in college,” Soo Lin said.

Jack double-taked. It had been all she could do to keep from grabbing the woman. She'd demanded to know more, but Soo Lin, a woman smartened up from hardship and endurance, had clamped down on the information she had. She guessed that once Jack had what she wanted, Soo Lin's protection would really be in her own hands. She gave Jack nuggets of information when she sensed Jack becoming annoyed, or acting like it wasn't worth the trouble. Jack had a name and an account of their college time together, but the lead ended there. An orphan, this Katherine had no parents to speak of, so there was no home address on any of the college papers. She'd entered school in the city with Soo Lin, swiftly earned a degree in poetry, and then silently dissolving back into the hoi polloi. Normally it would have been enough to go on, but Katherine Banks was bland enough that sh had made little impression on everyone, save Soo Lin Yao.

Soo Lin promised she had more information, and she was in danger. Likely she would have texted Megan, but if Megan was keeping Jack from getting close to the museum, she wouldn't have gotten much further involved with Soo Lin's comings and goings. If Jack didn't make it to the museum before Zhi Zhu, she might lose the only lead she had.

0-0-0

John's arse was sore. He was a grown man, curled into a human question mark underneath a table in the pitch-dark of a museum basement. His only saving grace came from the fact that Sherlock, easily a whole foot taller than him, was underneath the table as well.

“Stop it,” Sherlock growled, angling his head so he appeared to be listening to the table with great intensity.

“Stop what?” John asked.

“Being self-satisfied. It's annoying.”

John sniggered. It really wouldn't have been so damn amusing if they hadn't been parked under here for a full half hour waiting for God knew who to walk through the door.

“Remind me again why hiding underneath the table is the best way to be doing this,” John whispered.

“I thought you used to be a soldier or something,” Sherlock said. “Surely they would have utilized the element of surprise.”

“Of course, but it's _dark_ , Sherlock. We could hide behind one of those bloody crates if we wanted to. All that matters is that we aren't seen when whoever is going to show up shows up.”

Sherlock as silent. John, after a moment's pause, sucked in a breath. “You tit.”

“Hush.”

“You like the dramatics of hiding underneath a sodding two inch high table don't you, you complete _tit_ -”

“Shut _up_ , John,” Sherlock said, craning his neck. A second later and John heard it too, the subtle sound of a door pushing open and the air from the hall whooshing in. John heard the whoosh of blood running in his own ears in response.

Sherlock's hand closed over his foot and gave it a squeeze before he pulled away and melted into the darkness.

It was on.

0-0-0

Soo Lin Yao was a pretty young woman who didn't deserve to be startled the way she was when Sherlock grabbed hold of her. She hadn't screamed, but only just, taking her hand into her mouth and biting the second knuckle of all her fingers. When the fight was gone from her, they sat at one of the underlit appraising tables and listened to her tell her story.

Up until that moment, John had thought Sherlock had been unusually interested in the crimes – the suicides were tragic, yes, but also a bit banal for him. But Soo Lin's story added conspiracy-level layers that John was certain was making Sherlock ecstatic.

Just as Soo Lin was winding down in her story, John and Sherlock looked up in unison when they heard a distinct dip in the electrical white noise that surrounded them; the power to the floors above them has been cut. Soo Lin took a deep breath.

Sherlock was off like a shot before John could stop him. He cursed and took Soo Lin by the arm, indicating that she should go underneath the table. “I normally wouldn't recommend it, but you're smaller than me, so-”

“I'll be fine,” she said to him, waiving him off to help his friend. He looked her over for a moment and thought that she was remarkably well composed. He gave her a nod of approval before turning and running after Sherlock.   
In reality, Soo Lin was not well-composed. She had transcended the realm of panic and anxiety and was now existing in the liminal space between complete and total terror and an overwhelming numbness. It actually felt pretty good.

Zhi Zhu had been in London for at least two days, probably more. There was no way he wouldn't find her. Jack had passed her off to someone else in her network who really hadn't wanted to be bothered with her, and yesterday she'd stopped texting back. Soo Lin was on her own, and she knew it wouldn't be long before he appeared. There was a bone-deep tug in her body that told her Zhi Zhu was on his way.

Enough running. As long as she made good on her promise, there had been enough time.

She turned the kettle on.

0-0-0

Jack stalked the hallways in the dark. By the time she'd bust in through the backdoor, the lights had already been taken out in half the building. She'd taken off her shoes and stored them in the backpack she was wearing; she had on athletic socks with tread on the bottom, so she was practically silent as she wove her way cautiously through the darkened museum.

She heard one shot, then two, before she peeked around a corner and saw Sherlock crouched behind a museum cabinet.

“Some of those skulls are over a thousand years old, have a bit of respect!”

Bugger it all to actual hell.

Where Sherlock was, John was sure to follow. Jack threw herself against the wall and looped back the way she'd come. Obviously she didn't want to be stopped or seen by either of them. What was the safest way across?

A third shot popped behind her, further away than the first two had been, and she panicked. Screw safety-what was the fastest way to Soo Lin?

0-0-0

She hummed to herself as she prepared the teas. She'd heard gunshots a moment ago; it hadn't even slowed her down. Zhi Zhu was coming, and all she could do was make sure she finished what she set out to complete.

Still, she would not rush.

She closed her eyes and swirled the clay pot, rubbing her thumbs over the smoothness of it. The shifting wight of the churning liquid mimicked the shifting in her legs as she rocked it from side to side. She was attuned to the internal sloshing of her own body as it followed the motion of the tea. She was mostly too cynical for a religion or a faith, but she hoped wherever she ended up had a wealth of old clay pots that needed tending.

The back door slammed into the wall.

0-0-0

He couldn't look at her.

How could he?

But Shan- Shan said -

_**-enough, enough! Either she helps us or she dies!** _

_**Soo Lin should have stayed in line. Soo Lin-** _

_\- is my sister,_ he thought. _She protected me at night when we lived on the streets in Isan, folding me into herself to give me her warmth. She had no food so I could have what crumbs we could find. She is my_ _ **sister**_ _._

And he knew, when she turned and touched his face, called him _brother_ , he wouldn't be able to do it.

The back door hit the wall again.

0-0-0

Two floors away, John Watson stopped his furious search for his detective and huddled against the wall when he heard another shot from underneath him, in the basement. His whole body was minutely swelling with the beat of his heart, and his mouth was sour with the taste of pennies. He waited.

And then he knew.

His head fell back against the wall and he shut his eyes. He would never be able to explain it to Sherlock, not in any scientific way that would make any sense to the genius. John was no scientist, but he was a soldier, and he knew what it felt like when someone had died. There was no way to explain it; it was simply a symptom of being a catalyst to death the way he'd been. You never forgot the meaty crunch a skull collapsing under the force of your pullet, nor the way the world feels lighter by one person after you've done it.

The world was light, now.

 


End file.
